iHw:7 



:^:. 



EVANGELISTIC WORK. 



banseli0tic Hotft 



IN 



PRINCIPLE AND PRACTICE. 



BY 



ARTHUR T. PIERSON, D.D., 

AUTHOR OF "the CRISIS OF MISSIONS," "MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS,' 
" KEYS TO THE WORD," ETC. 



" Po the work of an Evangelist." 




NEW YORK 

THE BAKER AND TAYLOR CO. 

9 Bond Street. 



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Copyright, 1887, 
By The Baker and Taylor Co. 




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Press of J. J. Little & Co. 
Astor Place, New York. 



TO 

' DWIGHT L. MOODY, 

WHOSE LOVE FOR THE WORD, PASSION FOR SOULS, AND ZEAL 

IN THE WORK OF EVANGELIZATION HAVE PROVOKED 

TO LOVE AND TO GOOD WORKS VERY MANY 

ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA, 

Cljts Boolft is IBctiicatjtJ 

BY HIS CORDIAL FRIEND AND TRUE YOKE-FELLOW, 

THE AUTHOR. 



PREFATORY. 




is "the altar that sanctifieth the 
gift." To this divine pledge this 
book owes its origin and its inspi- 
ration. The object ennobles the oblation. 

The cause of a world's evangelization is 
like the wheel in Ezekiel's vision. Its rim 
is dreadful, for it touches both earth and 
heaven ; and every other question that is 
vital to holy living is embraced in it, — "a 
wheel in the middle of a wheel." To reach 
all human souls with the good tidings is so 
imperative in importance that it fills the 
word of God and covers the whole history 
and philosophy of church-life. 

It would be presumptuous to hope that 
the pen which writes these pages can solve 
this problem of the ages. But a close study 
of the theme for twenty years, in circum- 



Vlll PREFATORY. 

Stances providentially very helpful, has thrown 
some light upon the matter ; and experience, 
that, like lamps at the ship's stern, illumines 
the path which has been traversed, throws at 
least a dim ray over the onward course. 

When the walls of the House of Com- 
mons were to be ornamented with cartoons, 
Haydon, the historical painter, begged Par- 
liament that, if he might not be one of the 
elect artists, he might paint one figure, put 
on a few touches, or at least mix the colors 
or hold the brushes for those who were more 
favored. 

ARTHUR T. PIERSON. 

2320 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, 

September y 1887. 



CONTENTS. 

— ♦— 

Page 

Prefatory vii 

Part I. 

Chapter — 

I. The Evangelistic Problem .... 13 

11. The Scriptural Solution 25 

III. Duty and Delight ....... 38 

IV. Weights and Wings 52 

V. Power in Preaching 64 

VI. Wisdom of Words 79 

VII. The Secular Spirit 92 

VIII. Helps and Hindrances 106 

IX. The Service of Song 119 

X. Aids and Accessories 129 

XI. The Evangelistic Era 142 

XII. The Evangelistic Spirit 153 

Part II. 

XIII. Whitefield, the Field Evangelist . . 169 

XIV. Howard, the Prison Evangelist . . 184 
XV. Finney, the Revival Evangelist . . 197 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter Page 

XVI. Chalmers, the Parish Evangelist . .211 
XVII. Spurgeon, the Pastoral Evangelist . 220 
XVIII. Shaftesbury, the Philanthropic Evan- 
gelist 235 

XIX. Moody, the Evangelist of the People . 248 
XX. Bliss, the Singing Evangelist . . . 262 
XXI. McAll, the Evangelist of the French . 277 
XXII. McAuley, the Evangehst of the Out- 
cast 288 

XXIII. An Example of Evangelism .... 302 
XXIV. A Word of Witness 315 

Appendix 333 



PART I. 
EVANGELISTIC WORK IN THEORY. 



Evangelistic Work, 



CHAPTER I. 

THE EVANGELISTIC PROBLEM. 




1 S E S was bidden to make two 
trumpets of silver for the calling 
of the assembly and the journeying 
of the camps.^ 

That last command and commission of our 
Lord, 

" GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD 
AND PREACH THE GOSPEL TO EVERY CREATURE," 

is the signal blast upon the silver trumpet of 
the Great Captain of our salvation. Down 
through the ages sounds its clarion peal, 
echoing with the voice of God. It is the 
call for the solemn assembly, it is the sign 
for the journeying of the camps ; it summons 

1 Numbers x. 2. 



14 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

the Church to take up the onward march, 
and stirs believers to unresting action, that 
every Hving soul may hear the gospel of 
God. 

How to do this work with promptness, 
persistence, and power is the problem of 
Evangelization. It may well command and 
consume the best thought of the wisest, and 
the best effort of the strongest, of the followers 
of Jesus. The problem is gigantic because 
the factors in it are colossal, involving on the 
one hand the whole world of the unsaved, 
and on the other the whole church of the 
redeemed. This great trust is committed to 
the great body of believers ; and to it no true 
child of God ought to be, or indeed can be, 
indifferent. The one grand issue of the age 
is the immediate carrying out of our Lord's 
marching orders, " Go, make disciples of all 
nations ! " 

Let us, first of all, look at some of the fac- 
tors that enter into this problem. 

The population of the world is reckoned at 
about fifteen hundred millions. Of these at 



THE EVANGELISTIC PROBLEM. 15 

least one half are yet in the deep, dark death- 
shade, not only unconverted, but unevange- 
lized, — that is, unreached by the gospel 
message. That the picture may not be 
painted in the discouraging colors of the 
pessimist, or with the gloomy undertone of 
despondency, let us concede that only this 
half of the race remain to be delivered out 
of the darkness of spiritual death. How are 
we to bring every soul of this seven hun- 
dred and fifty millions of mankind to the 
knowledge of a crucified Christ ? This is 
the engrossing question, and in answering 
it some grave facts must be considered and 
weighed. 

First, it can never be done by the present 
inadequate supply of laborers. Take, for in- 
stance, the foreign field as the most distant 
from the centres of Christian influence, and 
as the most destitute of the gospel. If all 
missionaries, evangelists, and teachers in 
pagan, papal, and Moslem lands, including 
men and w^omen, foreign-born and native- 
born, were economically distributed, each 



1 6 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

woul.' nave twenty-five thousand souls to 
care fci. 

Secondly, the opportunity of evangelization 
is practically limited to the life-time of each 
generation, which is about one third of a 
century. Within that short period every new 
generation of Christian workers must accom- 
plish whatever work they are to do for their 
fellow-men, for both they and the souls for 
whom they are held responsible are rapidly 
passing away. The great bulk of disciples 
now living must contribute their part to the 
solution of this evangelistic problem within 
the bounds of this present century. 

Thirdly, all accessions to the churches by 
conversion do not represent actual growth. 
An increase of three per cent per annum 
goes to replace those church-members who 
die, and to keep the Church itself from de- 
clining in numbers and finally dying out 
altogether. Only what is in excess of this, 
therefore, represents real increase, the abso- 
lute gain of the Church upon the world. 

Now, those who have made a study of the 



THE EVANGELISTIC PROBLEM. 1/ 

matter, taking a survey of the wh'-jle area 
of Protestant and Evangelical Chr tendom, 
and the average accessions by conversion 
for the half century past, tell us that the 
increase is about seven converts yearly to 
every one hundred church-members. If this 
be true, — and it tallies with such conclu- 
sions as we have been able to make from 
a tolerably broad induction from facts, — 
we are makin'g such slow progress toward 
the world's evangelization, that we are gain- 
ing from the world only about four new 
converts a year for every hundred professed 
disciples ! 

At such a rate, even had we unlimited 
time for the work, it would take half a mil- 
lennium of years for the thirty millions of 
Protestant Christians to reach the half of 
the race now without the gospel. The 
melancholy fact is that the population of 
the world is more rapid in its increase and 
displacement than the Church is in its evan- 
gelizing march. With all the progress made, 
after all the triumphs of the gospel, and 



1 8 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

notwithstanding all the open doors and 
multiplied facilities of communication and 
impression, the host of the unsaved is un- 
doubtedly vaster to-day than it has been at 
any previous age of human history. 

These are not the only conditions that 
complicate the great problem. The Church 
itself lacks piety and therefore power. We 
have conceded that one half the race is al- 
ready evangelized ; but is this true? There 
are millions, nominally connected with Rom- 
ish, Greek and Oriental, and Protestant and 
Occidental communities, and even churches, 
who are sunk and buried in ignorance, 
superstition, and virtual idolatry. There are 
millions more who have a form of god- 
liness, but deny the power thereof; and yet 
millions more, who in the very blaze of gos- 
pel light live in irreligion, immorality, and 
infidelity. 

David was not the only saint who has run 
great risk in " numbering the people." Quan- 
tity is no guaranty for quality, or number 
and measure for weight. Even in Christian 



THE EVANGELISTIC PROBLEM. 19 

communities fearful vices and sins prevail. 
Recent investigations in England unearthed 
such depths of moral corruption that it was 
not thought best to expose the full facts to 
public gaze, and the veil of silence was drawn 
over the worst of the depravities revealed to 
those who conducted the investigations. The 
annual holocausts of the Moloch of Drink 
are so .enormously costly that figures cannot 
represent the fearful outlay. The orgies of 
Venus are kept side by side with the orgies 
of Bacchus, under the shadows of our courts 
of law and churches of Christ. The old land- 
marks of the Sabbath are swept away, and 
even disciples overstep without hesitation 
the paling of divine restriction which sepa- 
rates one day in seven unto the Lord. Infi- 
delity winds its subtle shining coils into our 
periodical and scientific literature, the chairs 
of college-instructors and even of theological 
professors; and the unmistakable *' hiss " of 
the serpent may sometimes be heard even 
through the smooth, persuasive oratory of 
so-called " pulpit-divines." 



20 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

It is this low type of piety even in Chris- 
tian communities and churches that is the 
main hindrance to all evangehsm. No less 
a man than the Rev. Dr. Rice of Virginia 
boldly said that four fifths of the member- 
ship of our churches add nothing to their 
real power; and that while such a standard 
of piety prevails evangelization will not be 
vigorously carried on, for God would not 
allow such a type of Christianity to be 
widely diffused ! 

While worldliness pervades the lives of 
nominal disciples with the spirit of the age, the 
spirit of Christ, which is the spirit of missions, 
is driven out. When piety ebbs to a low 
level, we find apathy and lethargy as to the 
condition of lost souls growing in the Church 
thick as rank sea-weeds. Where Evangelical 
faith loses its vitality, evangelistic work loses 
its vigor; for even those who call themselves 
disciples begin to doubt, if not to deny, the 
actual lost condition of men. Take away 
the honest, hearty belief that without Christ 
souls are lost, and you have broken the 



THE EVANGELISTIC PROBLEM. 21 

mainspring of evangelistic activity, paralyzed 
the nerves both of sensation and motion. 
Upon a worldly Church, however strong nu- 
merically and financially, God can place no 
dependence for pushing the evangelistic cam- 
paign. Practically the earnest workers and 
warriors are the few who live under a sense 
of the power of the world to come. 

Such, then, is the problem, and such some 
of the factors and elements which enter into 
and complicate it. The host of the unsaved 
is a vast multitude ; human life is very brief, 
and we must ''buy up opportunity;"-^ the 
field is world-wide, and the laborers are few ; 
the progress in gathering converts is lament- 
ably slow; the standard of piety and of 
morality even in Christian lands is lamenta- 
bly low; practical indifference as to the peril 
of lost souls is eating like dry-rot at the very 
foundations of evangelistic effort, — and who 
is sufificient for these things? 

When the Archbishop of Canterbury, the 
Primate of all England, went to announce to 
1 Eph. V. 1 6, Greek. 



22 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

the youthful Victoria the death of her uncle, 
William IV., and her accession to the throne 
of England and Hanover, she begged him 
not to retire until he had prayed with her. 
Without the strength of God she did not 
dare attempt to bear the weight of such a 
crown and sceptre. Two thousand years 
have almost passed since the ascending Lord 
left to the Church the responsible trust of 
giving the gospel to the world, and that trust 
is not yet fulfilled. Not only in the far-off 
lands beyond the sea, but in the very neigh- 
borhood of Christian churches and homes, 
men and women are living without God, and 
without the gospel. The light of the world 
has no more reached them than sunshine has 
the bugs that burrow beneath the stones by 
the wayside. How shall the Church of Christ 
do her duty to the dying about her doors? 
How turn this heavy trust into a sceptre of 
power, and this sacred commission into a 
crown of glory? There must be a new 
baptism of pi'ayer. We must look facts in 
the face, confront our opportunity and our 



THE EVANGELISTIC PROBLEM. 23 

responsibility, weigh the worth of immortal 
souls in the scales of God, and measure the 
power of the gospel by the might of Him who 
gave it. Prayer can unlock prison doors and 
make shackles to fall from our hands and feet, 
and the iron gate to swing open of its own 
accord. It can make one man to chase a 
thousand, and two to put ten thousand to 
flight. When God gives a command, the 
command is the pledge of power to fulfil it. 
All we need is to take up the work, while we 
lay hands on the arm of God to get power, 
as those who have faith in prayer. 

At the outset of the discussion of these 
tremendous questions, we record our solemn 
conviction that the best organized methods 
will prove only massive machinery with- 
out an adequate motive power, unless and 
until there come upon us a new baptism 
from above. Dependence on our own en- 
deavor is like propelling a boat by puffing 
with our own breath at the sails, or like mak- 
ing the world move on its axis by pushing 
it with our feet. And while conducting this 



24 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

discussion, the author devoutly implores for 
himself and his reader the guidance of that 
Spirit without whom the eye can see nothing 
clearly, and the life wield no sceptre of power 
for the salvation of man and the glory of 
God! 



THE SCRIPTURAL SOLUTION, 25 




CHAPTER II. 

THE SCRIPTURAL SOLUTION. 

IHEN God's Tabernacle was to be 
built, all things were enjoined to be 
'' according to the pattern " showed 
to the great leader and law-giver of Israel in 
the mount. 

In every spiritual crisis and practical per- 
plexity there is one unfailing, infaUible guide, 
— the oracles of God. For our standards of 
doctrine, here is the form of sound words ; 
for the moulding of character, here is the di- 
vine matrix ; ^ here are rules to regulate our 
relations to the world and to the Christian 
brotherhood ; the principles upon which the 
church is founded, and by which its activity 
is to be inspired and governed : for all things 
here is a divine pattern. We shall not turn 

1 Romans vi. 17, Greek. 



26 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

in vain to the Word of God to seek a satis- 
factory solution to the evangelistic problem. 

The teaching of our Lord throughout 
makes emphatic the duty and privilege of 
every saved soul to become a saver of 
others. This is found, not so much in any 
direct injunction, as in the general tone and 
tendency of all His words. The conception 
of the believer as a herald, a witness, a 
winner of souls, runs like a golden thread 
through His discourses, and even His para- 
bles and miracles. He does indeed say to a 
representative disciple, " Go thou and preach 
the kingdom of God ; " ^ He does enjoin, 
*' Go out quickly into the streets and lanes, 
highways and hedges, and compel them to 
come in ; " but the command is one which is 
incarnated in His whole life and is suggested 
or implied in the very idea of discipleship : 
" Follow me, and I will make you fishers of 
men." 

Last words have a peculiar emphasis. It 
is a forceful fact that, at or toward the very 

1 Luke ix. 60. 



THE SCRIPTURAL SOLUTION. 2/ 

close of each of the four Gospels, some say- 
ings of our Lord are found recorded which 
touch at vital points of contact the great 
question we are now considering.^ Harmo- 
nizing these passages, we shall find the divine 
pattern for the work of a world's evangeliza- 
tion, — a perfect plan that is the only possi- 
ble basis for the successful conduct of the 
work. It includes several particulars: — 

1. Jerusalem is to be the starting-point 
for a world-wide campaign, including all na- 
tions and every creature. 

2. The method of evangelization is three- 
fold: preaching, teaching, and testifying, — in 
other words, the simple proclamation of the 
gospel, confirmed by the personal witness of 
the believer as to its power, and followed by 
instruction in all the commands of Christ, or 
the training of converts for Christian walk 
and work. 

3. Attached to the command is a promise, 
also threefold : the perpetual presence of the 

1 Matt, xxviii. 18-20; Mark xvi. 15-20; Luke xxiv. 45- 
49 ; John XX. 21, 22. 



28 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

Lord, the working of supernatural signs, and 
the enduement with the power of the Holy 
Spirit. 

4. It is, however, to be especially noted, 
that neither the commission nor the prom- 
ise is limited to the apostles.^ Careful com- 
parison of Scripture with Scripture puts this 
beypnd any reasonable doubt. Christ need 
not have summoned the eleven apostles, 
whom He had already met in Jerusalem, to 
meet Him in Galilee ; but it was there that 
the great body of His disciples were found, 
and where the bulk of His life had been 
spent. It is more than probable that it 
was on this Galilean mountain that ** He 
was seen of above five hundred brethren at 
once;" and to them all He said, *'Go, make 
disciples." 

Here, then, is God's solution to man's 
problem. Evangelization is to be in a two- 
fold sense universal, — both as to those by 
whom, and as to those to wJiorn, the Good 
Tidings arc to be borne. All are to Go, 

1 Cf. Matt, xxviii. 16, 17, with i Cor. xv. 6, etc. 



THE SCRIPTURAL SOLUTION. 29 

and to go to ALL. The ascending Lord 
left as a legacy to believers, the duty and 
privilege of carrying the gospel to every 
living soul in the shortest and most effective 
way. To accomplish this, two grand con- 
ditions must exist: there must be evangelistic 
work by the whole Church, and there must 
be evangelistic power from the Holy Ghost. 

Happily, the historic witness both illus- 
trates and confirms the scriptural. Annibale 
Carraci deftly distinguished the poet, as paint- 
ing with words, and the painter, as speaking 
with works. What Christ sketched in lan- 
guage is expressed anew in the " Acts of 
the Apostles." Pentecost brought to all the 
assembled disciples the promised enduement; 
then, while the apostles were yet at Jerusalem, 
these disciples, scattered abroad, went every- 
where preaching the Word.^ Mark ! — " Ex- 
cept the apostles!' The exception is very sig- 
nificant, as showing that this ''preaching" 
was confined to no class, but was done by 
the common body of believers. 

1 Acts viii. 1-4 ; cf. Acts xi. 19, 20. 



30 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

Of course such " preaching the Word " 
implied no necessity for special training. 
To many modern minds the word " preach " 
always suggests a '' clergyman " and a " pul- 
pit." A ''sermon" is encased not only in 
black velvet, but in superstitious solemnity. 
There is absolutely no authority for any such 
notions in the New Testament. There no 
line is drawn between "clergy" and '' laity," 
and no such terms or distinctions are known. 

The word '' preach," which occurs some 
one hundred and twelve times in our English 
New Testament, means " to proclaim ; " it 
is the accepted equivalent for six different 
Greek verbs. Three of these are from a 
common root, which means "to bear a mes- 
sage or bring tidings ; " ^ and this statement 
covers about sixty cases. As to the other 
three Greek words, one is used over fifty 
times, and means " to publish or proclaim ; " ^ 
and another six times, and means ''to say, 
speak, or talk about." ^ The other, which 

1 Evayy^Ww, KarayyeWw, Siayy^Wco. 
" Krjpvcraeiv. ^ AaXrjcrai. 



THE SCRIPTURAL SOLUTION. 3 I 

means '* to dispute or reason," ^ is the only one 
of tJie six which suggests a formal disconrse 
or argumeiit, and tJiis is used only twice. 

One word used in connection with the 
preaching of these early disciples is espe- 
cially suggestive.^ It is close of kin to the 
English words " prattle," " babble," — mean- 
ing to use the voice without reference to the 
words spoken; it is one of those terms 
found in every tongue, which are the echoes 
of children's first attempts at articulate speech, 
and it conveys forcibly the notion of unstud- 
ied utterance. Those humble disciples talked 
of Jesus, telling what they knew. That was 
their " preaching." 

There is nothing in the word *' preach " 
which makes it the exclusive prerogative of 
any order or class to spread the good news. 
Even Stephen and Philip, who not only 
preached but baptized,^ were not ordained 
to preach, but to " serve tables " as deacons. 
All Jews had a right to speak in the syna- 

1 AiaA4yofJ.aL. '^ AaXioo. Acts xi, 19, 20. 

3 Acts viii. 5, 38. 



32 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

gogue/ and believers spoke freely in public 
assemblies.^ The proof is positive and am- 
ple that all the early disciples felt Christ's 
last command to be addressed to them, and 
sought, as they had ability and opportunity, 
to publish the glad news. 

Upon this primitive evangehsm God set 
His seal, confirming it with signs following 
and adding to the Church daily. To such 
preaching we trace the most rapid and far- 
reaching results ever yet known in history. 
Within one generation, — with no modern 
facilities for travel and transportation and for 
the translation and publication of the Word ; 
without any of the now multiplied agencies 
for missionary work, — the gospel message 
flew from lip to ear, till it actually touched 
the bounds of the Roman Empire. Within 
one century the shock of such evangelism 
shook paganism to its centre ; the fanes of 
false gods began to fall, and the priests of 
false faiths saw with dismay the idol-shrines 
forsaken of worshippers. 

1 Acts xiii. 15. 2 I Cor. xiv. 26-40. 



THE SCRIPTURAL SOLUTION. 33 

Subsequent history bears an equally em- 
phatic witness, but it is by way oS.^' contrast. 
No sooner had evangelistic activity declined, 
than Evangelical faith was corrupted with 
heresy, and councils had to be called to fix 
the canons of orthodoxy ; confirmatory signs 
ceased; and the evangelistic baptism was 
lost to the Church. Under Constantine the 
Church wedded the State, — the chastity of 
the Bride of Christ exchanged for the har- 
lotry of this world. Via crtccis, the way 
of the cross, became via lucis, the way of 
worldly light, honor, and glory. A huge 
hierarchy, parent of the papacy, rose on the 
ruins of the apostolic Church. The period 
of formation was succeeded by one of de- 
formation, marked by putrefaction and petri- 
faction, or the loss of godly savor and of godly 
sensibility. And until the Reformation, dark 
clouds overhung the Church. Heresy and 
iniquity; a papal system, virtually pagan; 
ignorance and superstition as bad as idola- 
try; a nominal Church of Christ, whose 
lamps burned low and whose altar-fires had 



34 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

almost gone out, — such was the awful 
sequence when habitual work for souls 
declined. 

Too much stress we cannot lay upon this 
joint testimony of these two witnesses, Scrip- 
ture and History, by which it is fully estab- 
lished that God has given us a plan for 
•evangelizing this world, and that the plan is 
entirely feasible and practicable. Our Lord 
has left us His pattern for speedy and effec- 
tive work for souls. So far and so long as 
that pattern was followed, the work was done 
with wonderful rapidity and success. So far 
and so long as that pattern is superseded or 
neglected, every other interest suffers. The 
promised presence of the Lord is condi- 
tioned upon obedience to the command, 
" Go ye into all the world and preach the 
gospel to every creature." To neglect souls 
is treachery to our trust and treason to our 
Lord. No wonder Evangelical soundness is 
lost, when the Church shuts her ears to the 
cry of perishing millions, and to the trumpet- 
call of her divine Captain. 



THE SCRIPTURAL SOLUTION. 35 

To primitive methods of evangelism the 
Church of to-day must return. In whatever 
calling the disciple is found, let him " therein 
abide with God." Whatever be the sphere 
of common duties, let all believers find in it 
a sacred vocation ; let us all take our stand 
upon the common platform of responsibility 
for the enlargement and extension of the 
kingdom of Christ by personal labor. 

Let us not invest the term " minister " 
with a mistaken dignity. It never conveys 
in the New Testament the notion of supe- 
riority and domination, but of subordination 
and service. " Whosoever will be great 
among you shall be your minister; and who- 
soever of you will be chiefest, shall be ser- 
vant of all." ^ One word rendered " minister " 
means '' an under-rower," ^ — the common 
sailor, seated with his oars in hand, acting 
under control of the " governor," or pilot.^ 

Neander shows conclusively that Chris- 
tianity makes all believers fellow-helpers to 

1 Mark x. 43, 44. - 'Twrip^Tris, Acts xxvi. 16. 

3 EvOvvwy, Jas. in, 4. 



36 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

the truth, and that a guild of priests is for- 
eign to its spirit.^ Teaching was not confined 
to presbyters or bishops; all had originally 
the right of pouring out their hearts before 
the brethren, and of speaking for their edifica- 
tion in public assemblies.^ Hilary, deacon at 
Rome, says that, in order to the enlargement 
of the Christian community, it was conceded 
to all to evangelize, baptize, and explore the 
Scriptures. Tertullian says that the laity 
have the right not only to teach but to 
administer the sacraments ; the Word and 
sacraments being communicated to all, may 
be communicated by all as instruments of 
grace; while at the same time, in the inter- 
ests of order and expediency, this priestly 
right of administering the sacraments is not 
to be exercised except when circumstances 
require.^ 

This chasm between " clergy" and ** laity" 
marks a rent in the body of Christ. The 
Church began as a pure democracy, but 
passed into an aristocracy and finally a 

1 Neander, i. 179. 2 j^ jgG. 3 j. 1^5, 



THE SCRIPTURAL SOLUTION. 37 

hierarchy. The creation of a clerical caste 
is a matter of historic development. We get 
a glimpse of it toward the close of the second 
century. Ignatius would have nothing done 
without bishop, presbytery, and deacon ; and 
after all these centuries this high-churchism 
still survives. 

The common priesthood of believers is a 
fundamental truth of the New Testament. 
Expediency undoubtedly restricts the exer- 
cise of certain rights, but never the right 
and duty of bearing the good tidings to the 
unsaved. The partial purpose of these pages 
is to show that only by a return to God's 
original plan can the work be done. After 
all our human resorts and devices, we are 
nothing bettered, but rather worse ; is it not 
time to reach out the hand of faith and touch 
the hem of His garment ? 



38 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 




CHAPTER III. 

DUTY AND DELIGHT. 

" Let the dead bury their dead ! Follow thou me ! Go 
thou and preach the kingdom of God ! " ^ 

HAT is a profound saying *' Let the 
dead bury their dead ! " It has a 
deep meaning; if at first it seem 
dull and lustreless, like a fragment of spar, we 
have only to turn it till the light strikes it at 
the " angle of reflection," and it will show rich 
hues. *' Life " and " death " are words that 
span the infinities : the difference between 
them is the difference between holiness and 
sin ; the distance between them, the distance 
between heaven and hell. 

This is a world of death. The dead, who 
know not nor feel the powers of the world 
to come, may well be left to bury each 

1 Matt. viii. 21, 22; cf. Luke ix. 60. 



DUTY AND DELIGHT. 39 

Other ; left to magnify the material and mor- 
tal, as all burial does. But for those who 
will hear and heed, Christ has a message of 
life. First of all, " Follow me ! " for " he 
that followeth me shall not walk in the 
darkness " of death '* but shall have the light 
of life." Then, " Go, preach the kingdom 
of God ! " Having the spirit of life, we are 
to speak the word of life. Christ came not 
to bury, but to raise and quicken the dead; 
and they who follow Him first get life, and 
then preach Him and so give life. Our first 
duty is to come unto Him that we may our- 
selves have life, and leave the ranks of the 
dead for those of the living; our foremost 
duty and our highest delight must then be 
to bring other dead to life ; instead of bury- 
ing them more deeply from sight and con- 
tact of the Lord of life, we must take away 
the stone, that the dead may hear His voice 
and live and come forth. 

Evangelization is simply this, — '• rolling 
away the stone, and giving the dead a chance 
to hear the word of life. It is bringing the 



40 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

evangel, or gospel, into contact with the 
unsaved ; and it is for contact, not conversion, 
that the Church is responsible. We are to 
do our part and leave God to do His. 

Paul says : *' Christ sent me, not to bap- 
tize, but to evangelize." ^ Baptism is not 
to be reckoned, like repentance toward God 
and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ,^ 
among the primary terms of salvation ; it is 
a sealing, not a saving, sacrament. We must 
not hft it to a level with faith. Faith justi- 
fies the soul which, in believing, appropri- 
ates Christ; baptism justifies faith, as one 
of its fruits and proofs, attesting faith as 
genuine. 

Every child of God may truly say, 
** Christ sent me to evangelize." This is 
a foremost duty and may be the highest 
delight. To evangelize is the first duty in 
the order of time, for there must be believers 
to be baptized, and converts to become 
confessors, in order to form the Church ; it 
is first in the order of importance, for it is 

1 I Cor. i. 17, €vayyt\\o/j.ai. 2 Acts xx. 21. 



DUTY AND DELIGHT. 41 

accession and growth that keep the Church 
in being. To the household of faith, as to 
the family of man, the condition of continu- 
ance is obedience to the law of increase. 
The propagation which keeps God's seed 
alive on the earth, and eventually spreads 
that seed over the earth and subdues it, is 
evangelization. Everything, therefore, both 
as to the existence and enlargement of the 
Church of God, hangs on evangelizing men. 

The Church must continually '' go, dis- 
ciple all nations," becoming to human souls 
everywhere nursing mother. So far as she 
fails to bring the gospel to the knowledge of 
the unsaved, she disobeys the last command 
of her Lord, declines in spiritual life, forfeits 
her commission, and risks the removal of 
her candlestick out of its place. 

That other duties are important we do not 
deny, but we do affirm that the importance 
of evangelization is primary. Our Lord 
enjoined upon us first to disciple all nations 
and then to teacJi them to observe all His 
commands. In the authorized version the 



42 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

two Greek verbs ^ are both rendered by the 
same word '* teach," but the mistake is cor- 
rected in the Revision, for they represent 
two great branches of our duty and trust: 
first, to go out and gather in disciples ; and 
then to teach and train the new converts in 
the knowledge and practice of truth and duty, 
— first, to " disciple " men, and then to " dis- 
cipline," or develop disciples into sanctified 
and serviceable workers. 

A great orator and sage, Sydney Smith, 
has said that the most effective figure in 
rhetoric is repetition. Probably the prin- 
ciples we thus lay down may seem axioms 
not needing demonstration, and scarcely 
requiring statement; but familiarity with 
truths takes away their force and blunts 
their edge, even as the tread of many feet 
wears away the inscriptions on memorial 
pavements, unless from time to time they 
are re-cut. And so we seek to give greater 
emphasis to admitted truths by frequent and 
varied statement. As with mallet and chisel, 

1 Madr]Tev(raT€ and SiSda-Koi'Tcs, Matt, xxviik 19, 20, 



DUTY AND DELIGHT. 43 

blow on blow, we would cut deeper that 
great inscription on the very threshold of 
church life, " Go, eva7tgelize ! " 

The Church is to bear and rear children ; 
but before she can rear, she must bear. 
There are pains of travail, but she must not 
shrink from the throes of birth through 
which alone God's household grows. We 
have seen that the last command is followed 
by a promise of His presence. The precept 
and promise are joined by a living link, for 
only as the precept Is obeyed can the 
promise be enjoyed. If the Church is 
faithful in making and training disciples, she 
basks in the sunshine of His smile. If zeal 
in evangelizing gives place to cold neglect 
of souls, her sun sufifers obscuration if not 
eclipse, so surely does He withhold or with- 
draw the tokens of His gracious presence 
and glorious power. The glory of the 
Shechlnah pales whenever passion for souls 
gives place to cold indifference. 

In various ways, by forms and figures 
both forcible and beautiful, the great Head 



44 EVANGELISTIC WORK. ■ 

of the Church has sought to impress this 
double duty of evangeHzation and edifica- 
tion. Two laws of church life are expressed 
and enforced throughout the New Testa- 
ment: first, the law of inward growth, and 
secondly, the law of outward extension. 
This is the key to much of the teaching of 
our Lord and of His apostles. In the 
interview between the risen Redeemer and 
His disciples, recorded by John,^ we find 
first a word of salutation, " Peace be unto 
you ; " then a word of commission, '' As 
my Father hath sent me, even so send I 
you;" and then a word of conferment. 
*' Receive ye the Holy Ghost." He not 
only gives the commission, but He bestows 
the power to carry it out, — a divine 
enduement. 

The work is great, but for it we have 
conferred by Him both authority and ade- 
quacy. The Church long since came to 
her Damascus and had her vision of the 
Holy One. She needs no longer ask, 

1 John XX. 19-22. 



DUTY AND DELIGHT. 45 

** Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" 
for He has set before her the primary duty. 
With pierced hands He points to the mil- 
lions who have not even heard His name, 
and says, *' Go out into the streets and 
lanes, the highways and hedges, and compel 
them to come in ! " 

When Mr. Webster, at the laying of the 
corner-stone of the Bunker Hill shaft, be- 
sought the vast concourse of people to 
"stand back," lest the crowd should break 
down the speaker's platform at peril of life 
or limb, — the answer was, " It is impossi- 
ble ! " " Impossible?" thundered the Amer- 
ican Demosthenes, " Nothing is impossible 
at Bunker Hill ! " And when we remember 
who gave us our marching orders, and who 
left us the pledge of His perpetual presence; 
when we stand beside that cross on which 
He bore our sins, and remember that He 
is the propitiation for the whole world,^ — 
we dare not talk of impossibilities. In the 
lexicon of the Christian life there is and 

1 I Joliu ii. 2. Revised version. 



46 EVANGELISTIC WORK, 

there ought to be no such word as " fail ! " 
Nothing is impossible at Calvary ! 

Canon Wilberforce tersely puts in four 
words the whole law of Christ, — '' admit, 
submit, commit, transmit." The first three 
concern the relation of the believer to his 
Lord. He is to admits to his mind and 
heart, the truth and Him who is the truth; 
submit his wayward will to His will ; and 
commit all things in trust to His keeping. 
The last of these four words expresses the 
relation of the believer to his fellow-men : 
henceforth he is to transmit; to become 
the medium through whom by lips and life, 
the light and love of God shall be trans- 
mitted to others. In these four words all 
the duties of the disciple are briefly summed 
up and comprehended. They are the car- 
dinal points in the horizon of his spiritual 
life. 

We are called not to be saved only, but to 
save. The watchword, the very motto on 
the banner of the Church, is service. The 
chief end of man is " to glorify God and to 



DUTY AND DELIGHT. 47 

enjoy Him forever:" to glorify Him is the 
necessary preparation for the highest en- 
joyment of Him. The work is committed to 
the weak ; God hath chosen the poor and 
base and despised, — those who are nothing 
in the eyes of men, that all dependence may 
be upon Him and all glory be to Him. 

God calls every disciple to direct effort to 
save men. The confession of Christ with 
the mouth, the preaching of Christ in the 
life, the translation of faith and hope and 
love into living forms, and of precept into 
practice, — all this is a mighty witness for 
Him and His gospel, but it does not exhaust 
the demands of duty. The command covers 
more than this : it means personal work for 
souls. 

The methods are so various that they are 
not defined or prescribed ; but they embrace 
the whole range of opportunity, the whole 
scope of possibility. From the lisping in- 
fant in the cradle to the savage cannibal 
on the isle in the sea, we are to see in 
every human being a soul to be taught 



48 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

the way of salvation. In the quiet home 
and the busy mart, in rural retreats or city 
streets, at workman's bench or school-boy's 
desk, wherever a child of God confronts 
a child of man, there must be a voice to 
speak because there is an ear to hear. Even 
prayer is not effectual, energetic,^ which does 
not lead us to do something. Till the field 
at your feet, and send others to till the 
fields which you cannot reach. Only thus 
will the world-field ever be sown with the 
seed of the kingdom, and wave with har- 
vests for God. We have too much faith 
in God to believe that He would leave to 
us a work which we cannot do. A loyal 
soldier of England's Queen, when asked how 
long it would take the British army and 
navy to carry a proclamation from Her 
Majesty to the ends of the earth, replied, 
** About eighteen months." We have no 
conception of the rapidity with which the 
flag of the cross could be borne to the 
limits of the globe, if the enterprise were 

^ Jas. V. 16, ei/epyov/xeur]. 



DUTY AND DELIGHT. 49 

really undertaken by the whole body of 
believers. In 1835, ^^^ Hamburg, seven 
men in a shoemaker's shop resolved to at- 
tempt in person to spread the good news. 
Within twenty years they had organized 
fifty churches, gathered ten thousand con- 
verts, scattered half a million Bibles and 
eight million pages of tracts, and preached 
the gospel to fifty millions of people. At 
that rate, two hundred and fifty disciples 
could reach the whole population of the 
globe in thirty years ! 

If to-day there were but five hundred dis- 
ciples on earth, and each of them and of 
their converts should bring to Christ one 
soul each year, by this simple geometrical 
progression the number of converts would 
swell so fast, as to include the whole race 
in twelve years. Or if there were but one 
disciple and he should be the means of 
converting one soul each year, and every 
new convert do the same, thirty years would 
multiply the number to more than thirteen 

hundred millions. 

4 



50 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

What does all this show? That the bulk 
of professing disciples neglect this foremost 
duty to a dying world, and practically do 
nothing whatever m discipling otJiers. In 
the question of personal salvation, service 
is forgotten. One fixes his thought on 
worldly treasures and pleasures, and buries 
himself out of sight and contact of the lost, 
in the sepulchre of self-indulgence ; another 
turns his thought to heavenly treasures and 
pleasures, but it is. all about his own salva- 
tion that he thinks. This is all selfishness. 
The miser and the monk are alike : each 
lives for himself, and for him.self seeks to 
lay up treasures; only the treasures differ 
in kind. It is a vicious type of piety that 
idly sits and sings, 

" When I can read my title clear," etc. 

Service is self- abnegation, self- oblivion. 
Moses was willing to be blotted from God's 
Book, and Paul could wish himself accursed 
from Christ, rather than have Israel cast 
away forever. He who would save others 



DUTY AND DELIGHT. 5 I 

must not be unduly absorbed in saving him- 
self. He who seeks first the kingdom of 
God will find his own salvation added to 
him, without fail. 

To you and me then is committed a dis- 
pensation of the gospel. If we do this thing 
willingly we have a reward, but if against 
our will, nevertheless there is the solemn 
commission. If there be some who cannot 
" go into the dark mine," like Carey, they 
can " hold the rope," like Fuller. But woe 
is me, if in some way or other I preach not 
the gospel to a dying world ! 



52 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 




CHAPTER IV. 

WEIGHTS AND WINGS. 

HAT is a beautiftil myth which repre- 
sents the birds as at first created 
without wings. Clothed in rich 
plumage and endowed with sweet voices, 
they could not fly. Then God made the 
wings and bade the birds go, take up and 
bear them as burdens. At first they seemed 
a heavy load, but as they lifted them to 
their shoulders and folded them over their 
breasts, lo ! they grew fast. The burdens 
became pinions, and that which once they 
bore, now bore them up to the heights of 
cloudless day. They could now soar as 
well as sing. 

We are the wingless birds, and our duties 
arc the pinions. When at God's beck we 
first assume them they may seem but bur- 



WEIGHTS AND WINGS. 53 

dens. But if we cheerfully and patiently 
bear them they become less and less a load. 
His yoke becomes easy and His burden 
light; and so we who once were slaves 
become the Lord's freemen, and mount 
up with wings as eagles. Duty has become 
delight. The weights on the feet of the 
athlete have turned to winged sandals on 
the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, 
like the talaria of Mercury, the messenger 
of the gods. 

When God made each believer a mes- 
senger of the gospel, He had at heart not 
only the salvation of the lost, but the best 
good of the believer. We are all naturally 
like the snail ; we carry our little world 
upon our back, and venture out of our 
shell only to pick up dainty morsels. God 
puts us in the midst of the unsaved, that 
we may get out of ourselves; He might 
send His angels to fly in the midst of the 
heavens and proclaim the everlasting gos- 
pel, but what would become of the be- 
liever? He would be a dwarf and a cripple. 



54 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

The reflex influence of evangelistic effort 
upon the Church itself, is scarcely less im- 
portant and valuable than the direct influ- 
ence upon unsaved souls. While then this 
universal responsibility cannot be avoided 
or evaded, there should be no desire to 
escape it, for in it lie the secrets both of 
growth and of joy. 

Growth is the law of all life, and action is 
the law of growth. The tree grows because 
there is motion in its cells, action among 
its atoms ; and so the root fibres strike 
downward, the stem fibres upward and out- 
ward, and the sap courses up and down. 
Beneath a silence which is like the hush of 
death, God hears the tread of life, and we 
see the proof in leaf and bud, in bloom and 
fruit. The silence is only the secret cover- 
ing life, the hiding of its power. A human 
limb that is not used cannot grow, but 
withers and shrivels ; the blood is stagnant, 
life is dormant, waste is no more replaced 
by supply ; all healthy development depends 
on life's endless revolutions. It is the one 



WEIGHTS AND WINGS. 55 

uniform law in every sphere of life, that 
powers are impaired, weakened, and finally 
lost by the lack of exertion and exercise. 
Stagnation breeds decay. 

Natural law has its correspondent in the 
spiritual world : *' To him that hath shall be 
given and he shall have abundance ; but 
from him that hath not shall be taken away 
even that which he hath," or " seemeth to 
have." God's law is. Use or lose. There 
is nothing good which is not lessened and 
lost at last by not using. In God's econ- 
omy disuse is misuse, abuse. Selfishness 
and self- absorption swell our worse self and 
shrink and shrivel our better nature. Self- 
denying service — work for God and for 
souls — shrinks whatever is unworthy of us, 
and feeds and fattens that other and nobler 
self. 

And so Paul said : " Herein do I exer- 
cise myself." He was the athlete, making 
weak and flabby muscles hard and firm and 
strong and sinewy. Our spiritual life finds 
its gymnastics in work for souls. The field 



56 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

is the world ; and work in it not only gets 
a crop, but makes the sower and reaper 
more a man and more a saint. It is thus 
that an intelligent disciple feels and knows 
that lost souls need his labor scarce more 
than he needs it; as a devoted Methodist 
bishop has said, " It is not merely how may 
I save others, but how may I save myself." 
Self-love drives and draws the child of God 
into service. The idleness which shuts us 
up to a self-indulgent lazy ease, shuts the 
channels of the soul to the influx of the 
life of God. No wonder the " first love " 
is left ! He, who like Paul, from the hour 
of conversion starts to win souls, cannot 
lose or leave his first love, save to find a 
second and better; everything left behind 
by such a disciple is only a goal gained, 
and becoming a starting-point for another 
goal farther on. He not only saves his 
soul, but saves his life. 

Yes, all growth comes of action. Grace, 
as well as nature, says so. We see a truth 
with clearer eyes, for trying to make others 



WEIGHTS AND WINGS. 57 

see it. We lift our load more easily for 
helping others bear their burdens. The true 
giver never fails to get back: he gets in 
giving. If not paid back in his own coin, 
God's royal bounty pays him in heaven's 
own shekels. He gives goods, and gets 
good ; he gives a word of instruction and 
gets knowledge, or a word of cheer and 
gets joy; he gives a lift and gets lifted, 
gives a tear and gets his own tears wiped 
away. This is giving bread and water, 
and getting ambrosia and nectar; giving a 
copper, and getting a mine oi gold and 
gems. 

So does nature teach and enforce that 
second lesson of grace, that, as there is no 
growth without action, so there is no joy 
without growth. 

It is the still pond, not the running stream, 
that freezes. The union of cold and quiet 
gives thick ice, but the rapid current of the 
brook cannot freeze solid ; if the frost gets 
hold of it at all, it is only to spread it with 
crystal which really keeps it warm ; while 



58 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

if the current be rapid enough, Hke the 
rushing torrent, it defies the cold, or if it 
freezes at all it is motion congealed, — the 
very ice is the image of life. 

You are neglecting souls; you are cold 
and hard and joyless, because the dull, dead 
stagnation of selfishness has left you to 
freeze solid. What you need is current. 
Your spiritual life must have motion, action; 
if it runs it will sing; there will come the 
murmur of music, a deep sweet peace like 
that of God, a joy like unto that which even 
Christ set before Him. 

These figures of speech must not veil the 
thought they are meant to reveal. All this 
is but expanding the old maxim of Dr. 
Duff, that "to cease to be evangelistic is 
soon to cease to be Evangelical." When 
work for the souls of men declines or ceases, 
the way is open for every doctrinal and prac- 
tical error. 

Shaftesbury said to an assembly of young 
men, " Depend upon it, whatever you think 
when you are young and stirring, the time 



WEIGHTS AND WINGS. 59 

will come when you will take counsel with 
your gray hairs, and }'ou will then bless God 
if your career has been one by which your 
fellows have been benefited and God hon- 
ored ; and if you have endeavored as much as 
lay in your power to advance His holy name, 
and to do good to all that were wuthin reach 
of your influence. Nothing is more likely 
to keep you from mischief of all ki?tds, from 
mischief of action, of speculation, from every 
mischief that you can devise, than to be ever- 
lastingly engaged in some great practical work 
of good. Christianity is not a state of opin- 
ion and speculation. Christianity is essen- 
tially practical, and I will maintain this, that 
practical Christianity is the greatest curer 
of corrupt speculative Christianity. No 
man, depend upon it, can persist from the 
beginning of his life to the end of it in a 
course of self-denial, in a course of gener- 
osity, in a course of virtue, in a course of 
piety, and in a course of prayer, unless he 
draws from his well-spring, unless he is drawl- 
ing from the fountain of our Lord Himself. 



6o EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

Therefore I say to you, again and again, 
let your Christianity be practical." ^ 

We have nowhere met wiser words. 
*' The fruitful bough whose branches run 
over the wall," is that which grows from a 
strong, well -rooted, vigorous and healthy 
stock on the other side. The foremost dis- 
ciples in spiritual attainment are the fore- 
most in unselfish, persistent, untiring work 
for souls. Nothing makes our experience 
here as the days of heaven upon earth, like 
the consciousness of being used of God to 
win souls. Even Christ Himself is fully sat- 
isfied only when He sees of the travail of 
His soul, and beholds His countless seed. 
How slow we are to learn that the divine 
secret of joy is filling up that which is 
behind of the sufferings of Christ, in be- 
coming ourselves the messengers of His 
saving grace, and the means of making that 
grace effectual to the salvation of others. 
One may well be crucified with Christ, in 
order to be glorified together; and this is 

1 Hoddcr's Life of Shaftesbury, i. 327, 328. 



WEIGHTS AND WINGS. 6 1 

taking up the cross and following Him, to 
be willing to be what He was, and to do as 
He did, to bring many sons unto glory. 

No man, perhaps, in all Christian history, 
has shown more devotion to Christ and to 
souls than the apostle Paul, He surren- 
dered all things for the sake of sharing in 
the fellowship of His sufferings. But his 
renunciations were far overbalanced by his 
compensations, and the epistle to the Philip- 
pians is his balance-sheet. What things 
were gain to him, those he counted loss for 
Christ, laboring incessantly, and becoming all 
things to all men, that by all means he might 
save some. Yet his life's key-note w^as " Re- 
joice in the Lord ; " and he who went down 
into the lowest depths to lift up the fallen, is 
the man who was caught up into the third 
heaven, and heard what it is unlawful to utter. 

There is then a double need of evangeli- 
zation. Only thus can the wide world ever 
be reached by the gospel message, and only 
thus can the true life, health, growth, and 
joy of disciples be promoted and secured. 



62 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

God needs every believer in the work 
of discipline others. This is not limiting 
God ; what He might do, and what He will 
do, are two different questions. His de- 
clared plan is and always was, to use the 
disciple as a witness for Him and a winner 
of souls. There never was or will be a 
body of ordained preachers large enough 
to evangelize this world without the help of 
the great body of disciples. Generals and 
captains may plan a campaign and conduct 
an engagement, but it is the rank and file 
that do the marching and the fighting. 
Every torpid church or idle Christian is a 
hindrance to God's cause, and a help to 
the enemy of God and man; a dead weight 
upon the usefulness of those who are will- 
ing to work, and a block upon the chariot 
wheels of God. He who anywhere neglects 
work, everywhere delays work. The Church 
at home is the engine of the whole ma- 
chinery of the work abroad. What if there 
be no adequate motor to keep the wheels 
revolving? And what of the indifferent 



WEIGHTS AND WINGS. 63 

disciples who throw on the fire more water 
than fuel? 

When Sir Joshua Reynolds painted Sarah 
Siddons as " the Tragic Muse," he placed 
his own name on the skirt of her robe, 
content, as he said, to go down to posterity 
on the hem of Mrs. Siddons's garment. If 
we but knew the present joy and the future 
glory of those that turn many to right- 
eousness, we should be willing to take the 
lowest place among all those who have part 
in this work, which is the only one that 
angels envy. 



64 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 



CHAPTER V. 

POWER IN PREACHING. 




ND now, gentlemen," said the first 
President of the Royal Academy, 
as he brought to a close those 
consummate lectures on Art, *' I have but 
one name to present to you : it is the name 
of the incomparable MiCHAEL Angelo." 

The central secret of all successful evan- 
gelism, in its last analysis, is the constant 
presentation of the One and only " Name} 
given under heaven among men whereby 
we must be saved." The very word " evan- 
gelism " implies that all must primarily and 
ultimately depend upon the faithful preach- 
ing of Christ crucified. To this all other 
means and methods must be tributary and 
subsidiary. But terms are not always used 

1 Acts iv. 12. 



POWER IN PREACHING. 65 

intelligibly, and as we have all drifted more 
or less from our original moorings, it may 
be well to ask what is meant by *' preaching 
the gospel " ? Much so-called preaching for 
some reason fails to reach, touch, move, and 
mould men for a better life, or at most carries 
no converting power. Paul has left us his 
model for effective preaching, and hinted some- 
what as to its matter, manner, and mission.^ 

Its subject-matter is '' Christ crucified." 
The medicine of God for all the wants and 
woes of man is the cross : to preach the 
gospel is to lift up the Lamb of God where 
all may look and live. Even John the Baptist 
was content to be only a voice crying, a 
finger pointing: "Behold the Lamb of God." 

The very heart of the gospel is a fact. 
" He bare our sins." That fact is closely 
linked with four effects: a death unto life, 
a bringing unto God, a redemption from sin, 
a deliverance from the world.^ This grand 
fact is the central theme of all true preach- 

1 I Cor. i. 17-31. 

" I Pet. ii 24; iii. iS ; Titus ii. 14; Gal. i. 4. 

.S 



66 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

ing, the stem around which crystalHzes the 
science of salvation. It is not enough to hft 
up Christ as an example, the model for a 
" reconstructed manhood." The rallying- 
point and the radiating-point of both doc- 
trine and life is the CROSS. This is the 
golden milestone in the Forum of the Ages, 
where all roads meet. From all quarters 
sinners, seeking to be saved, must come to 
it; to all quarters, saints seeking to save, 
must move from it ; and it is on our way to 
the cross as penitent sinners, or on our way 
from the cross as witnessing saints, that we 
find every need of man met and every vital 
question answered. 

" Christ crucified " is no narrow theme. 
As the God-man, all that is in God is in Him, 
and all that is in man is in Him, save sin ; 
and combining both, He adjusts all the mu- 
tual relations of God and man. From His 
cradle to His cross, and from His cross to 
His crown, all our experience is represented 
and illustrated. He is the power and wis- 
dom of God, for He offsets our impotence 



POWER IN PREACHING. 6/ 

and ignorance. Man's sin springs partly 
from the incapacity of the natural man and 
partly from the hostility of the carnal mind.^ 
Its cure cannot be found, therefore, either in 
the power or wisdom of man, and all attempts 
at self-help and self-rescue have been, and 
ever must be, dismal and disastrous failures. 
The providential mission of the two great 
nations of antiquity was to show man's weak- 
ness and folly. Roman civilization stood for 
law and arms ; its watchword was Power. 
Greek civilization stood for letters and art; 
its watchword, Wisdom. Both those nations 
rotted in their own vices and drew the vul- 
tures to the prey by the scent of their decay. 
Well might Paul not be ashamed to present 
to the Roman, Christ the power of God, and 
to the Greek, Christ the wisdom of God. 

He who would discuss evangelism must 
be true to his own convictions ; the place is 
holy ground, and He who dwells in the Bush 
demands truth in the inward parts. Can- 
dor and a good conscience demand that we 
1 Cf. I Cor. ii. 14, and Rom. viii. 7. 



68 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

record our deep and deliberate conviction 
which reaches to the roots of our being, that 
there will be no marked advance in evangel- 
istic work, witJwut more emphatic and exclusive 
preaching of Christ crucified. The themes 
treated in the modern pulpit, as well as the 
sensational announcements by which they are 
heralded, often make us blush with shame. ^ 
They are travesties upon preaching. The 
connection of many a so-called *' sermon " 
with the Word is fictitious or factitious ; the 
robe of a tawdry rhetoric is substituted for a 
divine simplicity of speech ; for lack of spe- 
cific gravity, specific levity abounds, and the 
pulpit becomes a place for secular entertain- 
ment, if not of clownish buffoonery. 

A popular and even a profitable lecture is 

1 Take the pulpit notices for one week : "Confidence," 
" Dynamite under the Throne," " Bible Laws at Business," 
" Ideals of Manhood," " Why She came to the Kingdom," 
"Scientific Scepticism," "Taking Account of Character," 
" Would the Virgin Mary, St. Peter, or St. Patrick attend a 
Catholic Church ?" " Forcibleness of Right Words," " Sins 
Covered at Pompeii," ** Ethics of Marriage," " Conditions 
of Power," " Success in Life," " Up a Tree," " Short Beds 
aud Narrow Coverings," "How to choose a Wife," etc. 



POWER IN PREACHING. 69 

not always fit for the pulpit. Preaching is 
the unfolding of a scripture-germ, — a "Thus 
saith the Lord." The true preacher thinks 
God's thoughts after God. By searching the 
Word, and comparing spiritual things with 
spiritual, he gets at the mind of God. This 
germ he buries in his heart, till by holy, 
prayerful meditation it is made to grow, to 
germinate. The Word, first born of God, is 
born again of man ; it becomes incarnate in 
his conviction and affection, and so in his 
speech. '' Expression is the result of im- 
pression ; " the power of the former will cor- 
respond to the depth of the latter, as in the 
tree the expanse of the branches above 
ground corresponds to the expanse of the 
roots below ground. 

The true sermon has a divine genesis; it 
begins in God. The Spirit broods over the 
mind, till the chaos of dim perceptions and 
confused conceptions is resolved into order. 
God says, "Let light be," and light is.^ Then 
comes separation between heavenly and 

1 Gen. i. 3, Hebrew. 



70 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

earthly things, and, Hke stars in a cloudless 
sky, celestial glories appear, and there is 
revealed a firmament of radiant splendor. 

The preaching that has such a Genesis will 
end in an Apocalypse of Jesus Christ, a reve- 
lation of the crucified and glorified One, 
which fits a man to speak to the churches 
with strange authority and power. The Word 
of God, alive with the thought of God, has 
taken root downward and bears fruit upward. 
It is no mere intellectual growth, branching 
into analytic argument and blooming into 
flowers of rhetoric. The hearer instinctively 
feels that such preaching is a more than 
human product, — a burning bush, aglow with 
the mystic flame before which reverence 
removes the sandals of criticism. 

So it has ever been. The preaching which 
God uses to convert men lifts Christ cruci- 
fied, and finds the secret of its power in turn- 
ing the eyes of men to Him alone. The 
Master Himself has left us our first and last 
lesson in homiletics : " And I, if I be lifted 
up from the earth, will draw all men unto 



POWER IN PREACHING. J I 

me."^ The preacher is a mediator between 
God and man, His mouthpiece, His ambas- 
sador. He must hear the Word at His mouth 
and then speak that Word as nearly as possi- 
ble just as he hears it from God. 

This is the germinal law of the sermon. 
There must be that preparation, above all, 
which is scriptural and spiritual. To learn 
to do this work easily is the peril of the 
preacher. Facility and felicity in the merely 
literary processes, and fluency and beauty 
in utterance, are often mistaken for pulpit 
power. The homiletical faculty is substituted 
for a mind, heart, tongue, infused, suffused, 
transfused with that Spirit who is the breath, 
the hght, the Hfe of the Word. The intel- 
lectual and human crowds out the spiritual 
and divine. 

Such preaching will, of course, be power- 
less to save and sanctify, for a stream rises to 
no higher level than its source. Preaching, 
when it is instinct with God's power, is the 
spreading of God's truth over the whole man, 

^ John xii. 32. 



72 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

till it touches intellect, sensibilities, affections, 
conscience, will ; but we can apply truth to 
others only so far as it has first been applied 
to ourselves. God's word, in order to be 
effective, must have the man behind it as 
well as before it, and come forth backed by 
a rich personal experience, a co-ordinate 
testimony from the inward life of the 
preacher. 

This is what we have called the germinal 
law of the sermon. It must get its. theme 
and the essentials of its treatment from the 
teachings of the Word and of the Spirit. 
Then there is the preparation for that preach- 
ing which has the power of God. 

To this germinal law, we add a terminal 
law. There is a certain end, or terminus, to 
be kept in view. A sermon is sermOy a 
speech having a definite aim, a result in 
the convictions, affections, resolutions of the 
hearer. As the germinal law gives the start- 
ing-point, the terminal gives the goal of 
sacred discourse. There must be a terminus 
ad quern as well as a terminus a quo. 



POWER nv PREACHING. 73 

In pulpit oratory there are three elements, 
either of which may control : the text, the 
subject or theme, and the object or end 
aimed at. If the text rule, the result is an 
exposition or exegesis ; if the subject, an 
essay or discourse ; if the object to be at- 
tained be steadily kept in view, and control 
the disposition of the parts and the expres- 
sion and delivery, we get properly a sermon. 

The first thing to be fixed, in framing the 
normal sermon, is, therefore, the ejid or result 
to be reached ; then we are ready to choose 
the best subject to reach the object, and the 
best text to develop the subject. Other 
methods may be and are employed with 
some success, but not with the highest suc- 
cess. If a man starts with a subject which 
he proposes to treat, he runs the risk of 
accommodating the text to the theme rather 
than the theme to the text. In some such 
cases the notion which is the germ of the 
sermon is found in the preacher's brain rather 
than in the mind of God, and the use of 
Scripture is sometimes so foreign to its origi- 



74 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

nal purport and purpose that it becomes a 
caricature. Others start with a text which 
seems attractive or effective, and it is elabo- 
rated into an exposition more or less instruc- 
tive and profitable. But if, in the course of 
its treatment, no other end is kept in view, 
there is risk of merely displaying ingenuity 
and originality in interpretation, interesting 
and perhaps instructing the hearer, but not 
grappling with his conscience and will, as in 
the most energetic and effective oratory. 

The careful study of the preachers who 
have wielded most spiritual power will show 
that, although their methods are often de- 
fective and even crude, they are always seek- 
ing after souls ; they may set all homiletical 
and even grammatical laws at defiance, but, 
whether consciously or unconsciously, there 
is a definite purpose, evolved^ perJiaps^ in tJie 
process of maJzing or preaching the sermon^ 
which purpose reacts upon the product. 
Many a discourse which began in the viola- 
tion of this fundamental law of the sermon, 
has been remodelled while it was wrought. 



POWER IN PREACHIXG. 75 

He who started with a topic or a text ends 
with an all-engrossing object, — the saving or 
sanctifying of souls, the only object that 
can produce the ideal sermon. 

If we are to have a new^ era of power in 
preaching, we must have a more definite re- 
sult, tow^ard which all else moves. An essay 
may be ingenious, and an exposition original, 
and yet lack oratorical power; as Whately 
said, the man " aims at nothing, and hits it." 
Above all others the preacher needs the 
power of an engrossing purpose. Then 
Betterton's remark to the Lord Bishop of 
London will no longer have point ; that 
w'hile " actors speak of things imaginary as 
though real, preachers speak of things real 
as though imaginary." ^ 

These germinal and terminal laws we be- 
lieve to be fundamental to preaching-power ; 
could they become governing laws, they 
would revolutionize modern preaching. We 

1 Betterton's original epigram was : 

" You, in the pulpit, tell a story ; 
We, on the stage, show facts." 



']6 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

have given emphasis to them, for it has 
"■ pleased God by the fooHshness of preach- 
ing to save them that beUeve." The pulpit 
is the main agent in evangelisation, and to 
raise or lower its standard is to help or to hin- 
der every other form of active effort to save 
souls. When the '' preachers of the gospel " 
are content to preach the gospel; when Christ 
crucified is their theme, and is treated ** in a 
crucified style ; " when the germ of every ser- 
mon is some seed-thought of God that has 
found root in the heart and borne fruit in the 
speech ; when the aim of every sermon is to 
glorify Christ in saving and sanctifying souls, 
and toward that end every thought and word 
and gesture converge, — we shall see results 
of which even Pentecost was but a prophecy 
and foretaste. 

In the assault on Fort Pulaski, every ball 
in that first volley of seventy guns struck 
within a circle twelve feet in diameter. Down 
came the flag ! Of what use to resist such a 
fire ! Many a flag of Satan would be hauled 
down if our guns were pointed in one direc- 



POWER IN PREACHING. J J 

tion and shot upon shot were hurled, heavy 
and hot, against the walls of his citadel. The 
gospel is still the power and the wisdom of 
God unto salvation. There is no promise that 
man's word shall not fail; but "My word," 
says God, " shall not return unto me void." ^ 
Again we affirm it — would that it were 
with a clarion peal as loud as the trump of 
Gabriel! — we must have a thoroughly Evan- 
gelical, if we are to have a thoroughly evan- 
gelistic, pulpit. Men must be drawn not to 
us, but to the Cross, and to us only that they 
may through us be drawn to Christ. Those 
attractions only are legitimate in the preacher 
that make the Cross effective. Let us have 
the gospel unmixed with human philosophy, 
poetry, rhetoric, and apologetics. It is the 
mixture of incongruous material that makes 
brittleness. That preaching that corrupts 
and adulterates God's gospel with man's 
wisdom lacks consistency and coherence, and 
is doomed to practical failure. 

"I preached philosophy and men applauded: 
I preached Christ and men repented." 

^ Tsa. Iv. n. 



78 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

The facts, rather than the philosophy, of 
redemption we are to preach. We are to 
speak the truth on the authority of a *' Thus 
saith the Lord." Lowering God's Word into 
a comparison and competition with systems 
of human teaching sacrifices this unique au- 
thority. The primary test of human systems 
is found in their appeal to my reason and 
conscience ; the primary appeal of the gos- 
pel is found in the fact that God speaks. 
The philosophy of His scheme of salvation 
is too deep for me ; even the angels desire to 
look into the deep things of God. I may, 
like Nicodemus, ask Jiow or why these things 
are so, but to my question God answers only 
by solemn and emphatic repetition, " Verily, 
verily, I say unto thee." So must we dare 
to preach with authority, as ambassadors of 
God. There has never been an era of pulpit 
power except with such conditions, and there 
never will be. 



WISDOM OF WORDS. jg 



CHAPTER VI. 



WISDOM OF WORDS. 




NE of the mysteries of chemistry is 
neutralization, the process whereby 
the pecuHar properties of one sub- 
stance are, by another, destroyed or rendered 
inert or imperceptible. Thus, acids and alka- 
hes more or less completely neutralize each 
other. Combinations may from harmless 
elements produce poisons, or render poisons 
harmless. Mr. Froude says that prussic acid 
is formed of the same elements, combined in 
the same proportions, as gum-arabic.^ Hydro- 
gen, that most combustible gas, and oxygen, 
that great feeder of combustion, unite to 

1 Short Studies, page 178. The statement seems inac- 
curate. Hydrocyanic acid = Nitrogen 14+ Carbon 12 + 
Hydrogen I. Gum-arabic = Oxygen 52.09+ Carbon4i.4-|- 
Hydrogen 5.51. 



8o EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

form water, the foe of combustion ; while 
nitrogen, the '* lazy giant," and oxygen, the 
very spirit of energy, hold each other in 
check in the atmosphere. 

It is possible to render neutral and in- 
effective even the vital truths of redemp- 
tion. Paul wrote to Corinth that he would 
not preach the gospel "with wisdom of words, 
lest the cross of Christ should be made of 
none effect!' Even the gospel may be neu- 
tralized by foreign mixtures ; matter is not 
independent of manner. There is a way of 
preaching even Christ crucified that prevents 
spiritual power. 

Two great questions arise as to evangelistic 
preaching: How shall it be made attractive, 
and How shall it be made effective. We must 
draw and hold, before we can win and mould 
men. Paul touches a vital point; he hints 
that there is a sort of attractiveness which 
sacrifices effectiveness, — something mixed 
with God's medicine to make it more palata- 
ble, that destroys its corrective and curative 
properties. 



WISDOM OF WORDS, 8 1 

In the apostle we have a man naturally 
vain and ambitious, and having a double 
culture in Hebrew and Greek schools, who 
successfully resisted a subtle temptation which 
has proved to many a preacher the fatal fruit 
of a forbidden tree. Men of great powers 
have often veiled the homely gospel message 
behind the golden and silver tissues of ornate 
speech, corrupted the wisdom of God with 
the wisdom of man ; or dazzled by a show 
of genius, and robed spiritual truth in the 
scholastic gown of secular learning, as though 
it were but a higher school of human 
philosophy. 

The preaching that lacks simplicity makes 
the Cross of none effect, by lifting it above 
the level of the average man. When the 
gospel is robed in unsanctified rhetoric, at- 
tention is diverted from the Christ to the 
*' Chrysostom," the golden -mouthed orator. 
Such preachers, like the Pharisees, ''have then- 
reward ; " they call forth a cold intellectual 
assent, awaken an aesthetic pleasure, kindle a 
sentimental glow, perhaps even an enthusi- 
6 



82 EVANGELISTIC WORK, 

astic ardor and fervor; but they fail to pierce 
the heart with the sword of the Spirit which 
is the Word of God. That sword proves 
hving and powerful, not when worn in the 
sheath of scholarly culture, or when swung 
in air to show the flashing gems with which 
learning decks it, but when drawn from its 
scabbard and thrust naked into the hearer's 
heart. Nettleton slowly repeated the text, 
** I thought on my ways, and turned my feet 
unto Thy testimonies," and before he *' began 
to speak," the sword of the Spirit had already 
pierced his audience. A Scotch preacher 
has said that it is always some word of God 
that smites the sinner, and that man's words 
Q^c^Y feather God' s arrow, that it may "carry" 
straight to the mark. 

If the sermon is the unfolding of a Scrip- 
ture germ, it will naturally take largely even 
a Scripture form. As to the sprouting grain, 
so to the seed of His own truth God giveth 
its own body; hence Paul says, ''which things 
also we speak, not in words which man's 
wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost 



WISDOM OF WORDS. 83 

teacheth." ^ He conceived of the gospel as 
having a dialect of its own. Effective preach- 
ing gets not only its idea, but its form of 
speech, from above. Unction begins in a 
vital insight into truth and then imparts 
an utterance which is of the Spirit; first 
the anointed eyes and then the anointed 
tongue. 

Paul not only confined himself to themes 
which have their root in Christ crucified, but 
he would not present even those themes with 
wisdom of words, lest the human rhetorician 
or scholastic philosopher should displace the 
divine ambassador and thus the Cross be 
made of none effect. He gave divine truth 
its own celestial body, and so the glory was 
not terrestrial, but celestial ; men heard 
heaven's message in heaven's dialect and 
gave glory to God alone. 

May not much of the ineffectiveness of 
modern preaching find an explanation in the 
attempt to make it attractive and effective 
by mingling with it wisdom of words? The 

1 I Cor. ii. 13. 



84 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

pulpit of to-day is largely loyal to the truth. 
Probably at no time since the Reformation 
has Christ been more generally preached. 
But often the fashion of the message fails to 
fit its form and feature ; the truth is some- 
times robed in a " garment spotted by the 
flesh." We grieve the Spirit by the lack of 
faith in the power of God's Word and of 
God's Spirit to convert and transform. We 
forsake exposition and exegesis for philoso- 
phy and apologetics. Drawn down by the 
challenge of cultured critics and scientific 
sceptics, we vainly seek to cope with these 
** Syrians " upon the plain, and to fight them 
with human weapons on their own level. 
But the whole history of evangelism shows 
that even scientists and sceptics are not so 
won. Theremin is right: "Eloquence is a 
virtue ; " and the virtue that wrestles most 
powerfully with the foes of the truth is not 
the wisdom of the scholar or the magnetism 
of the orator, but the simple witness of him 
who speaks what he knows and testifies what 
he has seen; whose power to convince and 



WISDOM OF WORDS. 85 

persuade is the fact of being himself con- 
vinced and persuaded. 

The master dialecticians and rhetoricians 
have never been the greatest winners of souls. 
There was a preacher who died a half century 
ago, whose pulpit orations outshone in splen- 
dor any others of his day, yet though master- 
pieces of argument and analysis, they were 
not fruitful in conversions ; while the seraphic 
Whitefield, wielding the simple truth of God 
with the power of the Spirit, warmed even 
the cold calculating Franklin, and the philo- 
sophical sceptical Hume. There is an evan- 
gelist of our own day — a man of one Book, 
of whom men say, ''Howknoweth this man 
letters, having never learned?" who takes no 
pride in either his grammar or his rhetoric, 
and whose refined pastor once counselled him 
to keep silence — who has been moving two 
continents by simply holding up the Cross ! 

We fear that the drift of discussion and the 
very training of ministers are largely toward 
a vicious standard of pulpit power. Students 
are told to cultivate a high literary style, to 



86 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

aim at eloquence. Such terminology has 
too much of the worldly savor and flavor. 
The pulpit is no place for literary display. 
God bids us set up the unhewn altar that 
men may look only at the slain lamb upon 
it. He who, like Ahaz, brings into God's 
courts the elaborate carved Damascene altar, 
may hear men praise him, but he will see the 
Shechinah grow dim. Preaching is a divine 
vocation, and its power is of God. The 
preacher's style, like that of Atticus, "when 
unadorned is most adorned ; " like a maiden, 
sweeter without paint and perfumery. Buffon 
said, '*Le style! C'est I'homme!" We would 
go further: style, in the true preacher, is 
God speaking through him ; it is what he is 
as a man of God, an anointed messenger of 
God, inspired to utter His message. 

As to eloquence, Pascal doubted whether 
preaching presents a proper field for elo- 
quence save in the sense of speech that is 
thrilled by the power of a supernatural con- 
viction and persuasion. This cultivation of 
style, this aspiration after eloquence, tend to 



WISDOM OF WORDS. 87 

self -consciousness. Instead of being absorbed 
in tlie truth and in passion for souls, the 
preacher becomes hypercritical. A slip of 
pen or tongue, an ungrammatical or un- 
rhetorical blunder or blemish, annoys and 
disconcerts him ; while on the other hand 
a musical sentence decorously wrought and 
sonorously uttered, a figure ingeniously elab- 
orated, an original thought flashing its bril- 
liance, pleases his carnal nature, and awakens 
self-complacency. Such vexation and such 
satisfaction alike divert the mind of the 
ambassador of God from his divine voca- 
tion and grieve the Holy Spirit; such pride 
and such humiliation are equally unseemly, 
and, like a godless repentance, need to be 
repented of. 

Moreover, there is a certain nameless 
charm, a mysterious power, that invests the 
anointed preacher, which is known as tinc- 
tio7i. Its nature is a mystery; but one thing 
is sure, unction and self-conscio2isness never 
go together. He whom God fills forgets 
himself, and whatever recalls him from this 



88 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

self-unconsciousness hinders the free flow 
of God's power through him; and, seeing 
that this is so, the godly preacher habitu- 
ally cultivates this holy engrossment, for 
the sake of the divine endowment and 
enduement. 

In fact, the sense of the awful responsibility 
of preaching is itself enough, when truly 
awakened, to lead to self-oblivion. 

" It is curious," said Prof. George Wilson, 
" this feeling of having an audience, like clay 
in your hands, to mould for a season as you 
please. It is a terribly responsible power." 
Responsible indeed ! '* Probation " is that 
period of the soul's life when as yet the final 
decision is not yet made, either for or against 
God : to choose one way is salvation ; to 
choose the other way is damnation. Hence, 
zvhile the man of God is preaching, a hearer's 
probation may end and his salvation or dam- 
nation bezin. " Who is sufficient for these 
things?" While the preacher turns aside to 
indulge a flight of poetic fancy, elaborate a 
figure, indulge a pleasantry, or create a 



WISDOM OF WORDS. 89 

diversion, he is giving way to Satan, who 
stands at every priest's right hand to resist 
him ; and in that fatal moment he loses his 
grip upon a soul almost persuaded ; his hand 
lets up its pressure just as the scale is turning 
for God ! 

When a preacher gets such a conception 
of preaching it lifts him above criticism ; it 
inspires that fear of God which makes him 
fearless of man, intrepidly indifferent to either 
compliment or censure. It becomes irrev- 
erent impertinence in the hearer to pull out 
his watch when the half-hour is up, as though 
a discourse born of God, and having a definite 
end, could be arbitrarily cut off at the expira- 
tion of thirty minutes while as yet the argu- 
ment and the appeal are incomplete. The 
true preacher does not bow to the caprice of 
his hearer, nor yield to the senseless clamor 
for short sermons. A crystal of truth, like 
any other crystal, must be cleft according to 
its seams : a sermon that has an end to reach, 
and stops short of it, is a failure as truly 
as a sermon that reaches its true end and 



90 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

highest impression, and then grows weaker 
by going beyond its proper close. 

Brethren of the ministry, and all who preach 
this gospel, let us go into the darkness where 
God dwells and get His whispered message ; 
then what we have heard in the darkness, in 
the ear in the closet, let us proclaim in the 
light, in the ears of many, from the house- 
tops. Let us cultivate a divine self-oblivion. 
He who aims at wisdom of words may hear 
the shouts of the multitude praising the 
beauty of his bow and arrows and the grace 
with which he handles them ; but it is only 
when we lose ourselves in God that we hear 
the groans of the wounded, which are the 
supreme test of the archer's skill, and remind 
us of the fabled shrieks of the mandrake 
when it is pulled up by the roots. He who 
is to plead with men to be reconciled to God 
should come out of God's Pavilion with that 
chrism of a celestial presence which makes 
even the face to shine. 

There is a way of preaching that carries 
power; but it is not an invention of human 



WISDOM OF WORDS. 9 1 

oratory. Rhetoric and logic, poetry and 
philosophy, genius and culture, cannot in 
their best combination assure that kind of 
power. It must be gotten waiting upon 
God in the silence, secrecy, solitude, of the 
Holy of Holies where God dwells. 



92 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE SECULAR SPIRIT. 




HETORICIANS treat of a " law of 
accommodation," in accordance with 
which the orator is to descend and 
condescend to his audience, — to get down to 
their level in order to lift them up to his. 

This may do in rhetoric, but it involves 
risk in religion. During the whole history 
of God's ancient Israel and of the Church of 
Christ, the subtlest of all snares has been this 
plausible law of accommodation. Adopting 
worldly maxims, catering to worldly tastes, 
corrupted by worldly leaven, there has been 
a gradual letting down of the severe standard 
of New Testament piety, and a constant effort 
to robe the gospel in worldly charms, in order 
to attract worldly men to the church. 

The pulpit has, by this law of accommoda- 
tion, been lowered, at times, into a platform 



THE SECULAR SPIRIT, 93 

for lectures more becoming the lyceum, or 
into a stage for performances more fit for the 
theatre. The service of song, in deference 
to the dictation of this worldly spirit, has 
dropped into a display of mere artistic talent^ 
the appeal to aesthetic taste displacing the 
divine savor and flavor of worship ; so that 
in His house, where the Lord alone is to 
be exalted, " classical music " is exalted, 
papists and pagans are hired to lead the 
praise of Protestant worshippers, and pro- 
fane organists use the grandest of instru- 
ments to dissipate holy thoughts and im- 
pressions. We build gorgeous gothic fanes, 
furnished with crimson and gold, garnished 
with the artist's pencil and chisel ; then we 
secure for the pulpit the princes of ora- 
tory, and for the choir the star singers of 
the opera ; then we multiply concerts and 
chorals, fairs and festivals, entertainments 
and excursions ; and by such allurements 
hope to draw the people and to '' evange- 
lize the masses," But the hope is found to 
be delusive. 



94 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

These worldly expedients have proved 
very successful in secularizing the Church, 
but have sadly failed in evangelizing the 
world. They do not even draw the people 
except so far and so long as their novelty 
attracts curiosity seekers, or feeds the morbid 
appetite for excitement. It is time all such 
measures were abandoned as helps to the 
work of evangelization. They are rather 
hindrances ; for they destroy the peculiar 
character of God's people as a separate people, 
they divert attention from eternal things, and 
they grieve the Spirit of God, on whose pres- 
ence all power depends. 

The fact is, Zion's attractions are unique ; 
like her Lord, they are not of the world ; they 
belong to another order of beauty, *' the 
beauty of holiness." When the Church robes 
herself in the charms of worldly attire and 
adornment, she not only fails to draw the 
world to herself and to Christ, but she actu- 
ally takes the infection of the " Spirit of the 
Age," which, however disguised, is hostile to 
God. Instead of transforming the children 



THE SECULAR SPIRIT. 95 

of the world, she becomes conformed to 
them. The secular attractions with which 
she invests herself, so long as their power 
lasts, only turn the mind from divine things, 
drawing in the same direction as do the 
world, the flesh, and the Devil; and keeping 
men under the power of the world that now 
is, rather than bringing them under the 
powers of the world that is to come. 

The gospel has great power of attraction, 
but it is not of the worldly sort. The good 
news of salvation has true and lasting charms, 
and so has the life of every true disciple. 
Let a pure gospel be preached, and a pure 
type of piety translate and illustrate its saving 
truths in the language of life; and when Zion 
shall thus arise and shine, Gentiles will come 
to her light and kings to the brightness of 
her rising. 

If the Church would woo and win souls, it 
must be by offering them attractions and 
satisfactions which the world does not and 
cannot offer, — that which is bread and satis- 
fies spiritual hunger, instead of husks which 



96 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

fill but do not feed ; the well of water spring- 
ing up into everlasting life, instead of the 
broken cistern. The reason why the gospel 
of God's grace never wears out is because, 
to every penitent believer, it gives what it 
promises, — solid, substantial, satisfying food 
and drink. To draw souls, to get hold and 
keep hold upon them, the Church needs to 
be not more worldly but more unworldly ; 
in her separation from the world unto God 
there is power, for it seems to say there is 
something for the sheep within her fold, that 
the world cannot give nor take away. 

The Master has left us a warning to keep 
ourselves unspotted from the world, hating 
even the garment that is spotted by the flesh. 
There is a true law of accommodation : '' I 
am made all things to all men that by all 
means I might save some ; " but even this 
may be perverted into an abandonment of 
all that is peculiar, essential, and vital to 
Christian character. Not even the hope of 
saving some can justify the secularization 
of the Church. Lot may have hoped to do 



THE SECULAR SPIRIT. 97 

good to the wicked Sodomites when he 
pitched his tent toward Sodom and then 
went and dwelt there ; but he saved nobody, 
and ruined his family, and got out of the fire 
of judgment, himself scarcely saved. He 
was a type of all such believers as obey this 
worldly law of accommodation. Aaron tried 
it at Sinai, and the golden calf was the 
result; Solomon tried it in Jerusalem, and 
temples to Chemosh and Molech and altars 
to Ashtoreth and Milcom confronted Jeho- 
vah's temple. It was this very principle that 
brought in all the idolatries of Jeroboam and 
Ahab, and compelled the multiplied captivi- 
ties of Judah and Israel ; and it was this that 
in the days of our Lord's sojourn on earth 
left the Jewish church to be like a skeleton- 
leaf out of which the life-sap has gone. 
From the days when God bade his people 
come out of Egypt and forbade them to 
make mixed marriages and form alliances 
with the heathen, history has borne but one 
harmonious witness; namely, that conformity 
to the world upon the part of the Church 
7 



98 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

brings decay to piety and to all evangelistic 
activity. 

In the New Testament especially, the un- 
worldly character of the Church of Christ is 
written in large letters as upon public tab- 
lets, that all may read at a glance. Our Lord 
taught it in discourse and parable, and 
breathed it in His intercessory prayer. Paul 
and Peter, James and John and Jude, echo it, 
and the echo grows louder rather than fainter 
with each new reverberation. The Apoca- 
lypse as with mighty thunderings warns an 
already imperilled Church of the subtle snares 
of Babylon the gilded,^ the apostate counter- 
part of Jerusalem the golden. 

The array of Scripture texts on the one 
hand, and of historic facts on the other, is 
like the marshalling of two vast hosts, guard- 
ing God's people against the world's influ- 
ence and power; and on their banners we 
read, in command and symbol: "Be not con- 
formed to this world." Believers are the 
Temple of the Holy Ghost, and He cannot 

1 Rev. xvii 4, margin. 



THE SECULAR SPIRIT. 99 

tolerate idols in His courts. If we will have 
the spirit of the world, we cannot have the 
Spirit of God ; or if He comes at all it will be 
not as the shining Shechinah but as the con- 
suming fire; as Jesus with lashing scourge 
and flashing eye, not with hands outstretched 
in blessing. 

One thing is absolutely certain : the modern 
secularization of the Church, as we have be- 
fore said, has thus far had no effect in further- 
ing the work of evangelization. Never had 
the worship of God such manifold and costly 
accessories and adornments. All the re- 
sources of nature and culture, architecture 
and art, mechanical elaboration and poetic 
imagination, have been taxed to the utmost 
to make the ordinances of religion attractive. 
Yet in every quarter we hear the same com- 
plaint, that the common people are desert- 
ing the churches. Dr. John Hall quaintly 
remarked, that while across the sea the pop- 
ulation is divided into *' churchmen and 
dissenters," here it is divided into " church- 
men and absentersy But across the sea we 



100 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

shall likewise find the absenters far the more 
numerous. The late Earl of Shaftesbury, 
after large opportunity of observing and col- 
lating facts, stated, at the anniversary of the 
" Open- Air Mission " at Islington, that *' not 
more than two per cent of workingmen in 
England are wont to attend public worship." 
We have not the basis for an accurate 
statement ; but the plain fact stares us in the 
face, that the bulk of our population, espe- 
cially in the cities, is practically as unreached 
by the gospel as the masses of pagans are 
in the heart of Africa. These multitudes of 
home heathen do not come to our churches, 
and the churches do not go to them; there 
is often close contiguity, but no real contact. 
In no city of our land could the church build- 
ings hold the people were they church-goers, 
and yet these buildings are not half full. In 
London, on a bright Sunday morning, the 
London *' Times " found, from reports care- 
fully compiled and compared, an average 
audience of but seventy-five. In one of the 
Protestant *' cathedrals " of Philadelphia, only 



THE SECULAR SPIRIT. lOI 

twenty-five could be counted on a recent 
Sunday evening. In Detroit, a pew-holder 
in the most elegant church edifice of that 
" city of the straits," noted on the fly-leaf of 
his hymn-book, "November 27, fine evening; 
total attendance, 28." In the city of Broth- 
erly Love we have a total of nearly seven 
hundred places of worship, including those 
of all sizes and of every sect. Liberally 
estimating the average seating capacity at 
four hundred, we have, in a city of a million 
inhabitants, provision for a little over one 
fourth of the population. The key-note of 
. evangelization is lacking when there is not 
room for all. It is true that we can say, 
"And yet there is room;" but it is only be- 
cause even church-members are habitually 
neglecting the place of worship. 

We add a significant testimony. Professor 
Christlieb, of Bonn, Germany, said at the 
meeting of the Evangelical Alliance at Co- 
penhagen, that, " according to the statistics 
of the last twenty years, there has been a 
large falling off in attendance upon religious 



102 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

services throughout Europe, followed by an 
increase of crime. Paris has more atheists 
to-day than ever before existed in any great 
city. In no Christian country, however, are 
things so bad as in Germany. In many dis- 
tricts of Berlin there is only one . church to 
every fifty thousand of the population. In 
New York there are two hundred places of 
public worship ; in Berlin only fifty ; and out 
of the whole population of Berlin, namely, 
one million, only twenty thousand, or two 
per cent, attend divine service. Hamburg is 
even worse, for out of a population of four 
hundred thousand, public worship on Sun- 
days is attended only by five thousand. In 
certain provinces of Germany there are sui- 
cides at the rate of forty a week. The ordi- 
nary religious teaching of the country is 
quite dead, and Christianity resolved into 
mere education. Sceptical works are popu- 
lar with the working classes, and in the mid- 
dle and upper classes hundreds are led away 
by the influence of scientific discovery and 
invention." Dr. Christlieb further stated that 



THE SECULAR SPIRIT. 103 

there are ''forty thousand out of a population 
of two hundred and fifty thousand in the city 
of Edinburgh who go to no place of worship ; 
two hundred thousand in Glasgow out of a 
population of seven hundred thousand, and 
nearly a million and a quarter in London out 
of a population of four million." 

The test of the vitality of church-life, as of 
our Lord's messiahship, is this: "To the poor 
the gospel is preached." Matthew Arnold 
divides society into " an upper class, material- 
ized ; a lower class, brutalized ; and a middle 
class, vulgarized."^ Be it so ; a live church,, 
with God's gospel in her hands and God's 
Spirit in her heart, can penetrate to the lowest 
strata, and lift even the undermost. But this- 
never has been done, and never will be done, 
by wisdom of words or by the wisdom of 
this world. The church that conforms to the 
spirit of the age may be " swept and gar- 
nished," but will be still " empty;" the Spirit 
of God will not make it His Temple nor ex- 
ercise there His drawing power, and that is 

1 Somebody mistakenly quotes this ''pulverized" ! 



104 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

the only Spirit and the only Power that can 
ever fill these places of assembly with true 
worshippers or seekers after God. 

We must have a more unworldly pulpit. 
Preaching must be simpler in matter and 
manner ; it must impress men as dealing 
directly, honestly, earnestly, with their souls ; 
adapting itself to any class of hearers with 
facility, to private house or street corner or 
riverside as readily as to stately temples. 
Pulpit essays and orations that have scarce 
the salt that gives a gospel savor, that do not 
grapple with the conscience or arouse the 
will, help to make men infidels. They are 
poultices applied to the cancer which de- 
mands the knife; and the hearer begins to 
doubt whether sin is indeed a fatal disease, 
or whether the preacher himself believes the 
souls of sinners to be in peril. What may 
draw the rich and cultured may repel the 
poor and ignorant, who cannot afford to pay 
for costly pulpit talent, who cannot under- 
stand stately orations, and who instinctively 
know that superb church edifices, with 



THE SECULAR SPIRIT. 105 

expenses that only wealth can meet, are not 
for them ; and that, to be thoroughly wel- 
come, one must wear the insignia of riches or 
at least of competency to assume his share 
of the outlay. That instinctive " pride of 
poverty " which keeps the poor away from 
our splendid church buildings is not a wholly 
ignoble sentiment. 

We must have a more unworldly atmos- 
phere in the churches. True winners of souls 
have an indefinable air of simplicity and 
sincerity about them that disarms indiffer- 
ence and even opposition. The sinless One 
drew near to Him the publicans and sinners 
for to hear Him. In order to evangelization 
of the masses there must be identification 
with them. The culture that seems cold and 
critical, the refinement that repels by its fastid- 
iousness, the intellectuality that is exclusive, 
and the selfishness that is unsympathetic, 
turn even ministers of Christ into rigid, frigid 
statues, and our cathedral churches into mar- 
ble mausoleums for the burial of a gospel 
that is practically dead, powerless to save. 



[06 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

HELPS AND HINDRANCES. 




ECTURES on projectiles never yet 
made a marksman." Practical trial 
of methods and measures is the 
only true test of efficiency. The workman 
gets his best training for his work, in his work. 
Causes produce effects; means conduce to 
ends. Conversion is not a mechanical pro- 
cess, and yet there are helps and there are 
hindrances. Even supernatural power does 
not disregard natural law. Having laid down 
certain general principles, having given due 
prominence to preaching as the main instru- 
ment, it may now be well to glance at some 
of those subordinate helps which have been 
found to be aids in bringing souls within reach 
of the gospel and leading to self-surrender to 
Christ. 



HELPS AND HINDRANCES. lOJ 

First of all, we rank the evangelistic service. 
Church gatherings have a varied character. 
Sometimes they are social, for cultivation of 
fellowship in love and work ; sometimes 
sacramental, giving prominence to ordinances 
and holy rites ; sometimes devotional, for the 
expression of prayer, praise, and personal 
experience ; sometimes didactic, presenting 
truth mainly for the instruction and edification 
of habitual hearers. 

There is need of a service differing from 
all these, in having for its specific, professed 
object to press the claims and invitations of 
the gospel upon the unsaved, and in which 
everything from first to last shall be meant 
and fitted to lead souls to Christ and to an 
immediate decision. 

Such services are now only occasional and 
exceptional ; even the Sunday-school is rather 
didactic than evangelistic. It is true that in 
any sermon something may be said to move 
the unconverted, but in a gathering whose 
sole or special object is the conversion of men 
there resides peculiar power. Mr. Moody's 



I08 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

motto is : " Consecrate and concentrate," and 
he illustrates his maxim. To turn in one 
direction for a time all prayers and appeals 
and efforts gives sharper point to preaching, 
greater definiteness to praying, deeper spirit- 
uality to singing, and more energy to work- 
ing; it quickens faith in the gospel, awakens 
expectation of results, and attracts the half- 
convinced and the almost-persuaded, and im- 
pels them toward those final decisions that 
determine destiny for eternity. 

We have ourselves found it helpful to give 
to the second service of the Lord's day this 
evangelistic type ; to preach in a very simple, 
conversational way; to popularize the sing- 
ing by having a large chorus choir of earnest, 
praying people to lead ; to break up the 
service by greater variety of exercises ; to 
combine with preaching, prayer and praise 
and promise meetings ; to call trusty laymen 
to the front who have skill in presenting truth 
and winning souls ; now and then to have 
*' parents' and children's meetings " where 
the formality and stateliness of the ordinary 



HELPS AND HINDRANCES. lOQ 

service of worship give way to a familiar fam- 
ily gathering, with stirring music, short 
prayers, and brief addresses. 

Better still, if the second service be also 
free to all ; if by a vote of the congregation 
all exclusive rights in pews be surrendered, 
that the poorest may feel that he has a right 
as well as a welcome ; and if young men be 
sent out with printed cards of invitation, to 
distribute in hotels, saloons, on street corners, 
and in out-of-the-way places, — anything to 
get hold upon souls. Dr. Duff's reply to 
those who criticised his methods in India 
was, that he would stand on the street and 
beat two old wooden shoes together, if so he 
might win the ears of the people. 

In connection with evangelistic services, 
a change in tJie place of meeting sometimes 
helps marvellously in reaching ** the masses." 
Those who do not and will not come to 
church buildings will throng an opera-house, 
theatre, public hall, or rink; why not go 
there and preach to them? Conservatism 
would sometimes stick to a church buildinq-, 



no EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

even if there were no one attending but the 
minister and sexton, rather than hold a ser- 
vice of worship in an " unconsecrated" place, 
though thousands were ready to come there 
and hear the gospel. 

It is a significant fact that no '' consecrated 
places " are known to the New Testament ; 
no Temple of the Holy Ghost but the body 
of the believer or the collective body of all 
believers. The Tabernacle and Temple with 
their hallowed courts are no more; of old, 
where God had recorded His name He came 
to His people to bless them ; now, where two 
or three are met in His name, wherever spir- 
itual worship is offered. He records His name 
and comes to bless them.^ We would neither 
abandon church buildings altogether, nor un- 
duly magnify them as exclusive places of 
worship ; but we would subordinate all else 
to the reaching and saving of human souls. 

Evangelization depends, first of all, on get- 
ting the ears of men. Rev. Dr. William E. 
Knox, with his inimitable humor, told the 

^ Cf. Exodus XX. 24; Matt, xviii. 19, 20; John iv. 23, 24. 



HELFS AND HINDRANCES. I 1 I 

students at Auburn Seminary that, after thirty 
years of study, he had found the secret of 
success in the ministry: "Get a big audi- 
ence ! Spurgeon and such as he could not 
but be great preachers, because they had 
such multitudes to address." But behind this 
quaint humor hides a suggestion. We must 
sacrifice somewhat to get at men's ears. If 
we are in dead earnest we shall not stand on 
our dignity. Before a consuming passion for 
souls, a spirit of hypercriticism and excessive 
conservatism melts away. 

They used to say of Lord Eldon, that he 
^^ prevented more good than any other man 
ever did!' Many a man becomes a mere 
obstruction, lying squarely in the way of all 
advance, by such excessive conservatism 
and dread of innovation. Lord Shaftesbury, 
whose noble heart yearned over the neglected 
multitudes in London, and who declined the 
highest offices and honors because they in- 
terfered with his divine call to labor among 
the poor,^ found, as late as 1855, an enact- 

1 Life of Shaftesbury, ii. 511. 



112 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

ment still in force, prohibiting the teaching 
of the gospel and the worship of God in 
private houses where twenty persons beside 
the family were assembled. It shows how late 
in this nineteenth century obstructive relig- 
ious legislation could still survive, that, while 
no legal prohibition forbade any assembly in 
any numbers for gain or mirth, for secular 
or political ends, a body of Christians met to 
pray or preach were liable to fine and jail ! 
Though in most cases it was a dead letter, it 
was a " rod in pickle," an ecclesiastical engine 
ready for use when desired ; or, as Brougham 
said, "dormant, not dead," a reptile capable of 
being warmed into active life at any moment 
by malicious passions, avarice, or mistaken 
religious zeal. Shaftesbury sought, by a bill, 
to repeal so much of the Act as hindered 
properly and orderly conducted religious 
meetings. But he met a strenuous opposi- 
tion even from Christian lords and bishops, 
which actually put the bill in jeopardy. He 
saw the high dignitaries of the Church of 
England deliberately placing impediments in 



HELPS AND HINDRANCES. II3 

the way of religious worship and the evangel- 
ization of the masses of the people. Under 
pretence of preserving order in the Church, 
they were seeking ^ to limit the Christian 
work of laymen, arrest the progress of dis- 
senters, and prevent any innovations upon 
existing customs. 

The attitude of antagonism taken against 
his measure was to Lord Shaftesbury intol- 
erable. The idea of *' permission to pray" ! 
It was like permission to breathe. ** Every 
man should have perfect right to worship 
God when and how he pleased, in his own 
house or his neighbor's, in any number, at 
any time, unless the exercise of such right 
plainly endangered pubhc morality or public 
safety." But it was especially intolerable to 
him in view of the five millions in England 
who were wholly without instruction of any 
kind ; and at last, after heroic efforts, he 
carried all that was vital in his bill, and vin- 
dicated the right as well as privilege of such 
assemblies. 

1 Life of Shaftesbury, ii. 516-520. 



114 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

But the battle was not yet over ; there was 
yet to be conflict with this obstructive con- 
servatism. In the spring of 1857 ^ series of 
special religious services was commenced in 
Exeter Hall on Sunday evenings. Abundant 
success attended them. Thousands were 
present every Sunday evening, and from all 
quarters testimony was borne that a large 
class of those who were not habitual attend- 
ants at either church or chapel was reached. 
The movement appealed especially to work- 
ingmen. It disarmed their prejudices by 
providing that there should be no distinction 
of persons, no reserved seats or collections; 
and that the humblest should be dealt with 
on precisely the same footing as the highest 
man in the land.^ 

Twelve services were held, and even the 
heat of the weather did not hinder the grow- 
ing attendance. Toward the last, five thou- 
sand people thronged the hall, and half as 
many more left, unable to get in. When the 
services were suspended for the summer, 

1 Life of Shaftesbury, iii. 48. 



HELPS AND HINDRANCES. 1 1 5 

arrangements were made to reopen them in 
the autumn, but they were actually prevented 
by an inhibition issued by the incumbent of 
the parish to the minister who was to have 
officiated at the reopening. Nor would they 
have been resumed at all, had not the Non- 
conformists, who were not fettered by such 
ecclesiastical restrictions, taken up the matter. 
Again this noble philanthropist sought to 
secure legislation that would be favorable to 
evangelistic effort, and again he encountered 
strenuous opposition, though the speeches of 
his opponents were principally conspicuous for 
their extraordinary feebleness.^ The measure 
called forth an immense amount of " sacer- 
dotalism even among the Evangelical clergy." 
But public sympathy was with the measure, 
and a partial victory was ultimately secured. 
The special Sunday evening services at Exe- 
ter Hall grew in interest, and similar efforts 
were made in other directions ; and to reach 
the middle and upper classes, similar services 
were held respectively in the metropolitan 

1 Life of Shaftesbury, iii. 52, 53. 



Il6 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

theatres, and in Westminster and St. Paul's. 
By the middle of February seven theatres 
were opened, with an average attendance of 
twenty thousand seven hundred each night ; 
and of those attending, not more than one 
tenth had probably ever frequented any place 
of public worship before.^ 

The order was excellent, and the solemn 
silence impressive. '' Down the pale cheeks 
that once had blushed, and from the eyes 
still retaining lustre, tears flow, and occasion- 
ally over all the audience a stillness reigns, 
that proves reality to be more effective than 
fiction, and the story of a cross erected on a 
Judaean hill eighteen hundred years ago to 
have lost none of its power." ^ 

No one could honestly doubt the vast good 
accomplished by these professedly evangel- 
istic services held in the great Exeter Hall 
and the theatres of London. They drew 
thousands whose poverty and rags would 
have kept them from going to any ordinary 
place of worship and would have shut them 
1 Life of Shaftesbury, iii. 102. 2 j^, jji. 104. 



HELPS AND HINDRANCES. 11/ 

out of many, even had they gone. These 
services were related to other services of 
worship as ragged schools were to other 
schools ; their purpose was not to displace 
ordinary church assemblies, but by drawing 
the people first into contact with the gospel 
in the theatre or hall, to lead them into 
permanent church-going habits. And yet, 
not only did these services not meet with 
universal approval, but Lord Dungannon in 
the House of Lords led in open opposition 
to them. 

In this country, though less hampered by 
church establishments, efforts to " evangelize 
the masses," however successful, do not 
always meet either approbation or co-opera- 
tion. One instance may be given of hun- 
dreds. A prominent pastor in a large city, 
unable in his stately marble church building 
to get hold of non church-goers, prevailed on 
his people to open the opera-house for Sun- 
day evenings, and there, in place of three 
hundred, he spoke to three thousand. Yet, 
after some weeks of growing interest and 



Il8 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

experience of a manifest blessing in souls 
saved, his people deliberately discontinued 
these services, and went back to their church 
edifice, with its average attendance of a few 
hundred ; and although it was plain that they 
had lost their grip upon the people, they 
seemed content to have it so. We feel con- 
strained to ask. Where is our zeal for souls? 
Is a consecrated building practically of more 
consequence than the saving of the lost? 

The redemption of a soul is precious ; and 
soon it ceaseth forever. We do not wonder 
that evangelization moves slowly, when even 
in professing disciples there is so little down- 
right earnestness in the endeavor to save men. 
Fire is one of the greatest forces of nature. 
It not only burns and warms, but it marches 
on with the tread of a conqueror ; nothing 
stands before it. It consumes forests, it 
sweeps away vast structures, it melts even 
metallic barriers, in its onward progress. 
Give us one man on fire with God's Spirit, 
and nothing stands long between him and the 
souls that Satan holds in his Bastile ! 



THE SERVICE OE SONG. II9 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE SERVICE OF SONG. 




EED needs a soil prepared for the 
sowing. Sacred song is both a 
"■ former " rain to help the seed to 
germinate, and a 'Matter" rain to secure a 
fruitful harvest. In two of Paul's epistles 
he attributes to it value, as a vehicle for the 
communion of saints, and even for mutual 
exhortation, instruction, admonition.^ 

Evangelistic singing is a great help to 
evangelistic services. Even those who are 
too conservative to give up the psalms and 
hymns, fragrant with hallowed memories 
and the associations of centuries, admit the 
strange power wielded over the popular heart 
by those modern spiritual songs, which have 
already won for themselves a deserved place 

1 Eph. V. 19 ; Col. iii. 16. 



I20 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

in our song-service, because, however defec- 
tive lyrically or musically, and although they 
sometimes offend a fastidious poetic taste, 
they have been used by the Spirit of God as 
channels of His power. 

The reasons may in part at least be as- 
signed. First of all, they are for the most 
part Evangelical. Whatever they lack, they 
are saturated with the gospel ; sermons, set 
to music. There is no frame of mind or state 
of heart, from the dawn of religious inquiry 
to the full day of conscious salvation, which 
may not find in these spiritual songs a fitting 
expression and response. One who is on 
the point of decision may sing, — 

" I am coming to the cross." 

For one who needs to have emphasized a 
present salvation, there is — 

" Hallelujah, 't is done ! I believe on the Son." 

If you would stir the soul by exhibiting the 
sufferings of Jesus, there is that touching 
hymn ' — 



THE SERVICE OF SONG. 121 

" I gave my life for thee." ^ 

If an inquiring soul is tempted to delay, in 
the vain hope of making preparation, he is 
met with 

" Just as I am, without one plea ; " 

Or if falsely led to linger under legal shadows, 

" Free from the Law, oh happy condition ! " 

Who can doubt the real power over the 
popular heart of such inspiring songs as 
'' Wonderful Words of Life ; " or the deep 
sympathetic chord touched by " Rescue the 
Perishing; " or the quickening influence on 
faith of *' Simply trusting every day;" or 
the rousing and almost martial power of 

1 This hymn was suggested by the choice painting, 
*' Ecce Homo," in the Dusseldorf Gallery, over which is an 
inscription in Latin : — 

" All this I did for thee; 
What doest thou for Me ? " 

Zinzendorf, the Moravian bishop, overcome at the sight of 
this picture, and feeling deeply that he could make no 
fitting response to this solemn question, prayed his Lord to 
pull him forcibly into the fellowship of His sufferings, 
should he incline to shrink and remain without. 



122 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

" Hold the Fort! " We have been in hun- 
dreds of evangehstic services where some 
such simple gospel song, sung tenderly and 
sympathetically, has moved and melted the 
hearts of great audiences, so that the effects 
were almost visible. Of course this modern 
**hymnology" needs careful sifting, for it 
has much chaff mingled with it, but much 
of it proves, when planted in human hearts, 
the very seed of the kingdom. 

Another reason for the popularity and 
power of these evangelistic songs is the clear 
enunciation with which they are rendered. 
If the words cannot be understood, the sing- 
ing is regarded as a failure. As in reading 
the Bible " good emphasis is good exegesis," 
so good enunciation makes a sacred song an 
appeal and an argument. 

On the other hand, " artistic " singing aims 
to disguise and even *' elide," or glide over, 
consonants because they interfere with pure 
vocalization; and the favorite language in 
song is the Italian, because it abounds in 
vowel sounds. Artistic vocalists will sing an 



THE SERVICE OF SONG. 1 23 

anthem in English, giving such prominence 
to vowels and touching consonants so lightly, 
that the English can scarcely be distinguished 
from Italian.^ 

In that mysterious and subtle something, 
which in these days interferes with the perma- 
nent power of the gospel as preached, a large 
factor is imconsecrated organ-playing and cJioir- 
singing. A very quaint Episcopal bishop 
used to say that the Litany needed a new 
petition, asking deliverance ** from the Devil's 
poor and poor devils, whining saints and quar- 
tette choirs." 

The pulpit and choir are often not in 
practical accord. Dr. Goodwin says, — 

'' Cases are not few, nor hard to find, where in 

the handling of choir-leaders and those who abet 

them, the Lord's house is turned into a concert hall, 

the service of song made largely a device for filling 

and renting pews, and the minister compelled to 

1 As when an operatic singer in a church choir thus 
rendered the Fortieth Psalm; by the comparative size of 
vowels and consonants we may indicate their comparative 
prominence in the anthem : — 

"I— wA— A— t'd f A— W th' lA— W— d." 



T24 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

sandwich his part in between performances that 
suggest anything but the worship of God and the 
salvation of men.^ Sometimes indeed he has to 
come to his duties in the pulpit, after the world 
and the flesh and the Devil have, through the fin- 
gers and lips of an unconverted organist and choir- 
leader, set things moving to their liking ; and then 
turn the service over to them after the sermon, to 
be finished up as they may elect. Doubtless the 
Devil likes that way of conducting Sabbath services. 
If he can only get people's heads full of waltzes 
and operas and sonatas, and what-not else, before 
the preaching comes, and then have a chance to 
follow it up with a march or an aria of his own 
selection, the preacher's thirty minutes of gospel 
will not gready damage his interests. Little won- 
der that preaching in such circumstances saves few 
souls." 

There is not only manifest incongruity and 
impropriety, but as we believe somewhat that 

1 Here is a recent programme : " Organ prelude ; An- 
them : Solo by ; Carol ; Response to the Law ; Solo 

and Anthem ; Gloria Patri ; Offertory ; Anthem, with Solos 
and Duet ; Recessional, with orchestra." And this in a 
Reformed Presbyterian Church ! 



THE SERVICE OF SONG. 1 25 

borders on profanity, in putting forward un- 
godly persons to lead the service of sacred 
song. In this part of divine worship, hypoc- 
risy is not only sadly apparent but syste- 
matically tolerated. To hire those who are 
openly irreligious, though they may be w^ar- 
blers from the opera stage, to sing "Nearer, 
my God, to Thee," or to adapt " Jesus, lover 
of my soul," to " When the swallows home- 
ward fly," is putting upon a heartless formal- 
ity both praise and price. In more than one 
fashionable church choir, a singing-master, 
whose mouth is foul with tobacco and whose 
breath is foul with rum, sings Zion's sweet 
songs ; and we knew of one case in wdiich a 
woman of bad repute and her paramour were 
for years the leading singers in a Presbyte- 
rian church ; and of another case in which a 
choir left the choir-gallery for a beer saloon 
during the sermon ! 

Alas for the unappreciated powers and 
possibilities of sacred song ! Music probably 
approximates, most nearly of anything on 
earth, the language of heaven. Its uses in 



126 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

worship, in direct praise, in indirect prayer, 
in the expression of gospel truth, in soften- 
ing the sensibihties, drawing souls together, 
banishing unholy thoughts and kindling 
heavenward aspirations, no pen has ever 
described. 

On the stage of a Liverpool theatre, a 
comic, burlesque singer came out before the 
footlights to sing in character. Just then, 
echoing through the chambers of his mem- 
ory, there came the strains of a Sunday- 
school hymn, and with such power that he 
forgot his comic song and retired in con- 
fusion. Dismissed by the enraged manager, 
he gave himself up to a prolonged drunken 
debauch. Meanwhile the Moody and Sankey 
meetings had begun in the city, and as the 
drunken actor heard his low companions 
making the evangelists the subjects of ridi- 
cule and mimicry, the thought flashed on 
his mind that he might repair his ruined 
reputation by composing a burlesque song 
about them. 

He sobered himself enough to begin. 



THE SERVICE OF SONG. 12/ 

But in order to make sharper points and 
more telling hits, he must go and hear and 
study the men whose peculiarities he meant 
to lampoon. He went, of course in no frame 
of mind to be reached by the gospel. But, 
in the singing, he heard the gospel; it had a 
strange charm over him, like the playing of 
David's harp upon Saul; it drove out the 
demon that possessed him, and the burlesque 
actor became a penitent inquirer and then a 
rejoicing believer. Abandoning the stage, 
the comedian went into training for the work 
of a missionary ! 

In the mountains of the Tyrol, when twi- 
light is gathering and weaving its curtain of 
shadows, the mothers, wives, and daughters 
go into the valle3^s and sing. Up through 
mists and clouds float the melodies from 
beloved voices, till they fall like salutations 
of love upon the ears of fathers, husbands, 
and sons, as they wend their way homeward. 
On the Mediterranean waters, when the fish- 
ermen in their boats, enveloped in evening fog, 
can no longer discern even the outline of the 



128 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

shore, it is likewise the song of loved ones on 
the beach by which they guide their boats 
homeward. 

Who shall say how far sacred song may 
be used by consecrated lips, both to guide 
penitent souls to the blessed Christ, and to 
constitute a means of communion between 
saints? And if between heaven and earth 
there be possible any present communion, 
surely the songs which true disciples sing, 
making melody in their hearts to the Lord, 
must float upward, penetrating the veil that 
hangs between, and salute the ear of the 
redeemed upon the ** Delectable Mountains" ! 



AIDS AND ACCESSORIES. 129 




CHAPTER X. 

AIDS AND ACCESSORIES. 

HE crisis with the fisherman is the 
landing of the fish, whether by net 
or hne. So with the fisher of men. 
He may have had success in finding and 
skill in enclosing souls in the gospel net, 
but his work is vain if he does not secure 
them. 

There is no more helpful handmaid to 
evangelistic work than the "■ after-meeting." 
Its object is to make permanent whatever 
good has been done, to fix impressions made 
by the truth, to clinch nails driven by the 
master of the assembly. It is an inquiry 
meeting, but it is more. In all preaching 
services there is much 'Svasted ammunition." 
We often fail to bring men to a decision, and 
so our work is comparatively fruitless. 
9 



I30 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

The blacksmith drives the blast through 
his furnace fire, till the iron is at white heat; 
then he lays the iron on the anvil, and at 
once beneath the blows of his heavy hammer 
gives it shape. We with prayer and pains 
prepare to preach, add to convincing argu- 
ment persuasive appeal, and when souls are 
brought to white heat, in most cases we allow 
the impression to cool, and not only lose our 
opportunity but leave hearts to greater hard- 
ness than before. We ought to insist on 
instant, visible, decisive action, and show 
ourselves masters of the situation, with love's 
urgent entreaty impelling and compelling 
them to decide. 

On the other hand, how often does a 
solemn sermon close amid that hush of 
silence which is the sign and signal of a 
crisis in soul-history, when a few well-chosen 
words with individuals now under the Spirit's 
influence would turn the scale of destiny. 
The minister sits down, and a solo singer or 
a quartette choir warbles an air whose only 
effect is to drive away all real concern about 



AIDS AND ACCESSORIES. 131 

the soul ; then follows an " organ postlude/' 
that devil's device to '* play out" the people, 
and the impression too; and what these 
closing exercises of " worship " do not ac- 
complish, Satan's fowls of the air, flying 
about the church-vestibule, complete ; catch- 
ing away the seed that was sown in the 
heart. 

How many of the three thousand, pricked 
in their heart at Pentecost, would have been 
converted had Peter's sermon been followed 
by a modern operatic chorus with orchestral 
accompaniment on the organ, and promis- 
cuous worldly conversation on the way home? 
Peter held an " after-meeting," where the in- 
quirers' question, "What shall we do?" was 
promptly and plainly answered ; where the 
argument of the sermon was enforced by 
personal testimony and exhortation, and 
awakened sinners were urged, by firm but 
gentle pressure, from conviction to decision. 
Yes, CHOICE ! that was the master-stroke of 
Pentecost. And hundreds of hearers, now 
left to drift upon the current of worldliness 



132 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

into more hopeless alienation from God, 
would, if promptly, patiently, lovingly fol- 
lowed up while the impression of truth is 
fresh and forcible, yield to Christ as Saviour 
and Lord. 

The after-meeting is simply a device sug- 
gested by common-sense and experience to 
prevent truth from losing its grip upon souls. 
The net already cast it drags to shore ; the 
driven nail it fastens; the hot iron it ham- 
mers into shape. That is the philosophy of 
it in a nut-shell, and this sensible and ra- 
tional means the Spirit abundantly uses and 
approves. 

To the power of the after-meeting some 
things are essential. First, it should immedi- 
ately follow the other. A break is a loss of 
continuity; delay is disaster. As nearly as 
may be the preaching service should merge 
or melt into the other, unconsciously and 
imperceptibly; if the place of the meeting 
be changed at all, it should be to the room 
nearest and most accessible ; and if that 
room be on the way out, it will catch twice 



AIDS AND ACCESSORIES. 133 

as many inquirers as if it were at the other 
end of the building. When churches build 
to save souls, inquiry-rooms will be put 
where no one can go out without passing 
their open doors and those who at those 
doors invite entrance. 

After-meetings ought to be far more com- 
mon than they are. To let awakened souls 
go without such after-contact is in nine tenths 
of cases to lose hold of them. When the 
truth grapples with the conscience and the 
Spirit strives with man, Satan is on the alert 
to take advantage of the slightest interval of 
interruption, diversion, or delay, to dissipate 
impressions. We must keep up the pressure 
upon the conscience till the will yields ; a 
slight diversion may prevent conversion. To 
let go is to lose our advantage for Christ. 

Again, the after-meeting must be planned 
for; the best Christian workers ready, with 
their Bibles, for close hand-to-hand contact 
with inquirers, and to meet by an appeal 
to the Word every objection or obstacle to 
immediate and intelligent choice of Christ. 



134 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

There must be no undue formality, no wait- 
ing for some one else to move ; for while the 
worker hesitates and lingers, the golden mo- 
ment has fled. Variety is very helpful. It 
is well if no two such meetings are conducted 
alike ; it avoids running in ruts. Where the 
inquirers are many, there may be .a plain 
talk to them in a body, explaining very sim- 
ply the way of salvation, the nature of faith, 
and its supreme act of choice in the personal 
acceptance of Jesus as Saviour and Lord ; or 
some clear-headed disciple may be asked to 
tell in a few words just " how to be saved," 
or answer in a brief, telling way a few prac- 
tical questions. But the great end to be 
kept in view is to get before every soul the 
duty and privilege of unconditional surrender 
to God in Christ; and to secure this result, 
personal contact with each, one by one, has 
always been found the surest road to success. 
For such individual dealing with inquirers 
we need a body of trained workers, who like 
a physician can diagnose the disease from 
the symptoms and prescribe the remedy. 



AIDS AND ACCESSORIES. 1 35 

To the skilled worker, the Word of God is 
alike pharmacopoeia and dispensary, with a 
ready balm for every want and woe of man. 
He gets past all artificial pretexts and super- 
ficial objections, to his patient's heart ; then 
turning to the Scripture, selects the remedy 
in some fitting text, — a simple ''Thus saith 
the Lord," — which goes further than all hu- 
man arguments, anecdotes, or even personal 
experiences. 1 

Next only to the movings of the Spirit, 
this direct personal dealing is the surest 
means of bringing souls to Christ. Preach- 
ing is only preparatory : it spreads truth over 
a greater breadth of surface, but this carries 
it to a greater deptJi. We may preach to 
men in masses, but they are converted one 
by one. With rare exceptions, unless the 
word preached is followed by the word 
spoken privately and personally, it does not 
convert. Yet that converting word is often 
so simple that we can account for its power 
only by God's sovereign choice of weak things 
1 See Appendix A. 



136 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

We have known an ignorant old colored 
woman to lead to Christ by her tearful, ear- 
nest words, — ** I hope you love Jesus," — 
those whom the most convincing argument 
could not move. 

The fisher of men aims first of all to get 
souls into his net. Whatever will draw men to 
him and to the gospel he preaches, provided 
only it be a lawful bait, he does not despise. 

Our Lord used the feeding of the body as a 
help to the feeding of the soul. Dr. Guthrie 
yearned to see a real practical love-feast, — 
at least one decent, comfortable meal for the 
poor of God's household every Sabbath day.^ 
But why not give such Christian beneficence 
and benefaction wider scope ! Some years 
since, a prominent Episcopal church in New 
York City set in play a many-sided benevo- 
lence, and became a sacred Briareus, stretch- 
ing out a hundred hands to help. Not 
content with pitching a gospel-tent right 
amid the people, the body was fed that 
afterward spiritual hunger might be supplied. 

1 Autobiography, ii. 210. 



AIDS AND ACCESSORIES. I 37 

On Sunday afternoons the *' Andrew and 
Philip Society " served hot meats, oysters, 
tea and coffee and bread to hundreds of 
hungry men, as on Tuesday afternoons the 
" Mary and Martha Society " did to hungry 
women. Those who thronged the supper- 
tables naturally stayed to hear of Him who 
taught us to feed the poor as well as to 
preach the gospel to them ; and the drunken 
and degraded were led to Him and were 
so changed in look and life as no longer to 
be recognized by former companions in sin. 
Ah, if we have but the will and self-sacrifice, 
we may reach even the outcasts ; and some 
whom no man could bind or tame may be 
found clothed and in their right mind, sitting 
at Jesus' feet ! To the true winner of souls, 
the salvation of the lost is the golden mile- 
stone toward which all roads run ; he is so 
absorbed in reaching this great end that he 
is ready to use any proper means whereby 
to save some. 

House to house visitation is a mighty 
means of evangelizing, for it gives opportu- 



138 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

nity for individual approach and appeal. 
Unhappily this is done, if at all, occasionally 
and spasmodically, and not systematically 
and habitually. If the '' districting " of the 
great cities could be made the basis for a 
permanent division and distribution of labor; 
if each church would undertake, by systematic 
visitation within an assigned territory, to 
keep track of non-church goers, invite them 
to come to the place of worship and throw 
about them Love's embracing arms, — results, 
of such magnitude as we little suspect, might 
follow. 

All so-called mission movements are valu- 
able aids, some of them almost indispensable 
to permanent evangelistic success. Mission 
Sunday-schools, open-air preaching, gospel- 
tents, cottage prayer-meetings, medical and 
midnight missions, — whatever brings fellow- 
workers into contact with each other and 
with unsaved souls, God will surely honor 
and bless. No church, no believer, can afford 
to be without some mission work; its form 
is of minor importance. 



AIDS AND ACCESSORIES. 139 

''Christian associations" of young men and 
young women, when not secularized, wield a 
grand influence in evangelization; but there 
is danger just now that entertainments and 
exhibitions, lectures and socials, gymnastic 
sports and debating clubs, may absorb ener- 
gies that ought to be spent in direct labor 
for souls. These associations seem part of 
God's plan in our generation to develop lay 
activity, especially among the young men ; 
and this is perhaps their chief claim to our 
consideration and co-operation, that they 
train workers for evangelism and then set 
them at work. 

The " Gospel Temperance " movement, 
under the guidance of such men as John B. 
Gough, William Noble, Francis Murphy, 
William E. Dodge, and Canon Wilberforce, 
— not to mention certain heroic women of our 
day, — has already proved a mighty evangel- 
izing power. It proves at least a John the 
Baptist to prepare the way of the Lord ; and 
when such as Basil Wilberforce plead the 
cause of temperance it is a John the Evan- 



140 EVANGELISTIC WORK, 

gelist pointing to the Lamb of God. In his 
visit to the United States he addressed great 
throngs ; but whether in church building, 
association hall or opera-house he stood 
pleading for uncompromising abstinence 
from all that could intoxicate, the whole 
burden of his address was the impotence of 
the old Adam will to break the bonds of 
the drink habit, and the saving, keeping 
power of the Lord Jesus. 

Canon Wilberforce himself spoke of the 
fact that the temperance pledge is often the 
forerunner of conversion. He mentioned 
one gathering where six hundred working- 
men rose to acknowledge Jesus as their 
newly found Saviour, and it was noticeable 
that every one of them had on the blue 
ribbon, which showed that to them at least 
temperance had led the way to faith. 

The printing-press must not be forgotten 
among the foremost helps to evangelistic 
work. Printers' ink ! Great indeed is its 
power, either for good or evil. The compe- 
tition is sharp between the pulpit and the 



AIDS AND ACCESSORIES. 141 

press, and it is hard to say which wields the 
most imperial sceptre. There can be no 
question that the press commands the greater 
audience, whatever its comparative authority. 
Such an agency ought to be used, in every 
way, to spread the gospel, not only in sub- 
sidizing columns of newspapers for reports 
of sermons and for advertisements, but in 
multiplying printed notices, cards of invita- 
tion, and other devices to attract the eye of 
the casual reader or passer-by.^ Men of 
the world find great advantage in even very 
costly advertising. They give wide publicity 
to their business enterprises, and multiply de- 
vices to attract attention and draw customers, 
though in many cases these expedients are 
traps and snares. Why should not the chil- 
dren of light wisely use every legitimate 
means to call attention to the courts of God's 
house and the gospel feast there spread, and 
to set forth the fact that there is enough for 
all, and that it is free to all? 
1 See Appendix B, C. 



:42 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE EVANGELISTIC ERA. 




ISTORY is a succession of divine 
crusades. The careful observer de- 
tects a distinct and definite plan of 
Providence in every generation ; and God's 
true seers, the only wise and great in His 
eyes, are they who, as Prince Albert used to 
say, find out that plan and fall into their own 
place in it, and so serve their own generation 
by the will of God. 

In the Middle Ages God led on a crusade 
against feudalism. At no other epoch in 
history perhaps have the masses of mankind 
been as ill-treated as under the sway of the 
feudal system. Over its ruins the race has 
marched onward toward individual intelli- 
gence and independence, and the main hin- 
drances to intellectual growth and social 



THE EVANGELISTIC ERA. 143 

progress to-day are the surviving relics of 
that ancient thraldom. Then followed the 
double Reformation in philosophy and relig- 
ion, and the era of great inventions. God 
gave the Bible to the common people, and 
the mariner's compass, printing-press, and 
steam-engine, as means for bearing the mis- 
sionary and spreading the Word over the 
world. Then came the crusade of philan- 
thropy, when such as Wilberforce fought to 
abolish the slave-trade and break the slave's 
fetters, and such as Shaftesbury thought and 
wrought for a half-century to better the con- 
dition of inmates of insane asylums and 
laborers in factories, mines, and workshops. 
Under the same divine leadership we have 
come to the great Evangelistic Ei^a. During 
the last fifty years the grand question which 
has absorbed the best minds and hearts in the 
Church of God is how to bear the message 
of life to the whole human race as soon as 
practicable. Home missions and foreign mis- 
sions are but two gigantic arms of one still 
more gigantic w^ork, — a world's evangelization. 



144 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

When and where God leads, the true disci- 
ple follows. He dares not be indifferent or 
heedless when God says, " Go forward ! " 
This age is at once intensely individual and 
intensely universal; emphasizing on the one 
hand individual development and responsi- 
bility; on the other, the duty and privilege 
of doing good to all men. Because this 
movement is of God it cannot be stopped ; 
the waves will not be swept back and the 
tide is fast rising ; the very roar of the surf 
is God's voice of thunder calling His people 
to leave no human soul to live and die with- 
out the gospel. But before this great work 
is accomplished or even attempted on a proper 
scale, there are some truths and facts which 
the Church of God must come to see and 
feel. 

The Reformation was only a day dawn 
after long and deep darkness. The old truth 
of justification by faith was exhumed from 
the rubbish of half-pagan rites, false doc- 
trines, superstitious forms ; the right of the 
people to have and to interpret the Word of 



THE EVANGELISTIC ERA. 1 45 

God was affirmed and vindicated ; and a new 
and mighty impulse was given to Evangelical 
truth and life, which were not only exhumed 
but revived. Yet even so great a Reforma- 
tion left the Church in alliance with the 
State, and the hierarchical spirit prevalent; 
and so secularism and clericalism survived. 
Worst of all the failures of the Reformation 
was this, that the revival of Evangelical faith 
did so little directly to revive evangelistic 
activity. For three hundred years more the 
Church remained in a half-dead condition, as 
to the heathen world, either treating her 
obligations with contemptuous indifference or 
denying her debt altogether. And the con- 
sequence was that there were signs of a lapse 
backward into barbarism ! From the year 
1700 to about the time of the French Revo- 
lution there was a fearful decay of spiritual 
life. Both in England and America there 
was an awful dearth of conversions and 
almost a death of piety ; the land was flooded 
with infidelity and immorality ; it was the 
feature of the age that Christianity was treated 



146 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

with open disregard and made the butt of 
ridicule. Christ was no longer preached. 
Early in the reign of George III., Blackstone, 
the legal commentator, had the curiosity to 
go successively to hear every clergyman of 
note in London, and heard not one discourse 
which had more Christianity in it than the 
writings of Cicero, or from which he could 
have learned whether the author were a fol- 
lower of Confucius or Zoroaster, Mahomet or 
Christ ! 

This plain drift backward toward the dark 
ages was another illustration of the great 
fact that Evangelical faith and evangelistic 
work must go together. The decline of 
either risks the other; and therefore no revi- 
val of Evangelical faith is complete, or will be 
permanent, which is not closely followed by 
evangelistic effort. 

Since the middle of the last century God 
has been leading the way for a new Reforma- 
tion, and already there is a great advance. 
It began in a revival of preaching that was 
both Evangelical and evangelistic. At this 



THE EVANGELISTIC ERA. 1 47 

very juncture which marked the crisis of 
modern history, God raised up the apostles 
of this new era of evangehsm: Whitefield 
and the Wesleys, Grimshaw, Romaine, Row^- 
lands, Toplady, Fletcher, Edwards, — these 
were a few of the men whom He had pre- 
pared to herald this new Reformation. They 
preached the old gospel of apostolic days, 
everywhere, at all times, fearlessly, faithfully, 
fervently, pointedly; they taught the su- 
premacy and sufficiency of Holy Scripture ; 
the fulness and freeness of Christ's satisfac- 
tion for sin ; the universal need of the new 
birth; justification by faith and the vital link 
between faith and holiness ; and God's eternal 
hatred of sin and love toward sinners. The 
end and effect of such preaching were the 
preparation of the Church for the evangel- 
istic era, now just in its dawn or early 
morning. 

Whitefield, Wesley, and others who were 
pioneers in this great movement were evan- 
gelists and open-air preachers. They not 
only led the way in holding up a crucified 



148 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

Christ, but they set the example of seeking 
and going after the lost, and so stimulated a 
wide evangelism. The Church as a body 
did not feel the force of her obligation to a 
lost world ; and those who did, and who 
urged it, met of course with opposition. 
Every great advance in piety or philan- 
thropy, or even philosophy and invention, 
has encountered at least the inevitable vis 
inertice. 

The era of modern missions was born only 
through throes. Dr. Ryland bade Carey ''sit 
down " and not presume to undertake the 
conversion of the heathen. The Scotch 
Assembly branded such schemes as fanati- 
cal, revolutionary, dangerous ; Sydney Smith 
trailed the guns of his satire against the 
** nest of consecrated cobblers," caricaturing 
that humble missionary band with their 
twelve-and-sixpence. But even to-day hun- 
dreds of professed children of God do not 
yet see that God is leading on the last and 
greatest crusade of history, and that he who 
seeks to overthrow it fights against God, 



THE EVANGELISTIC ERA. 1 49 

while he who does not join it turns his back 
on the Captain of the Lord's Host ! 

This revival of universal evangelism is 
the New Reformation, and notwithstanding the 
apathy of the great body of Christians the 
crusade has made great advance. We are 
Hearing the close of a century of missions, 
during which more doors of access have 
been opened, more missionary organizations 
formed, more laborers sent forth, more new 
translations of the Bible made and more 
copies scattered, more converts gathered 
from Pagan, Papal, and Moslem communities, 
more evangelists raised up, and more evan- 
gelizing agencies set in motion, than during 
a thousand years preceding ! 

But as yet we have only begun our return 
toward the primitive, scriptural, apostolic 
basis. We still hinder the full display of 
God's power by clinging to the mistake of 
centuries. What is that mistake? Not the 
secular spirit which leavens the Church and 
leaves men of the world to guide its affairs, 
shape its policy, and even box-In its pulpit; 



ISO EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

not the hierarchical spirit which Hfts the 
ministry into a clerical caste and builds a 
barrier between them and the laity, even in 
work for Christ. All this is bad enough ; but 
worse than all and underlying all is tJie 
practical denial of the responsibility of every 
individual believer for reaching unsaved souls 
with the gospel. 

The spirit of indifferentism is still abroad 
in the Church. What most of us do to save 
the heathen at home or abroad, we do by 
proxy. We substitute for our own individual, 
personal work, other men and at best our 
mo7iey. Voluntary societies acting for the 
Church take the place of the whole Church. 
Out of some thirty million Protestant church- 
members, with over one hundred million 
nominal adherents, some five thousand labor- 
ers go abroad, and we give them a meagre 
support and rest content: are we not evan- 
gelizing the heathen ? We give one out of 
perhaps five hundred to labor as preacher or 
evangelist in fields nearer by, and here and 
there a few more to teach classes in Sunday- 



THE EVANGELISTIC ERA. 151 

schools ; but where are the multitudes of 
believers ? In their counting-houses and 
workshops, in the marts of commerce and 
the offices of the learned professions ; 
and the most of them absorbed in their own 
worldly business. If to-day the five thou- 
sand missionaries with their native helpers, 
and the faithful souls in home fields who 
are working to save the lost, were suddenly 
snatched away by a divine rapture as Enoch 
and Elijah were, who would carry on the 
work of evangelization? 

Oh for some new John the Baptist or Luther 
or Wesley to prepare the way of the Lord 
and sound the trumpet of this new Reforma- 
tion ; to provoke a listless, torpid Church to 
love and good works ! Again we repeat it, 
and write it in large letters as on tablets by 
the wayside that he who readeth it may run 
to do God's bidding: Every BELIEVER IS 
God's avitness, worker, warrior. The 
scriptural idea and ideal is a whole body 
of believers at w^ork for souls ; universal 
activity, world-wide evangelism. It took a 



152 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

whole Christ to redeem ; it will take a w^hole 
Church filled with the Holy Ghost to apply 
redemption. The great commission was ad- 
dressed to every believer, and must be so 
accepted. It is not needful that all should 
forsake other honest and honorable employ- 
ments in order to become professional 
preachers. '' Let every man, in that calling 
wherein he is found, therein abide with God." 
Not a new sphere of work, but new work in 
our sphere. ** Service " must be emblazoned 
on our banners, and become our watchword. 
Our secular calling must become a divine 
vocation. The world is wide, and the work 
is as wide as the world. There is a place for 
every willing worker, according to his ability. 
But to every one of us a dispensation of the 
gospel is committed ; and only he who hears 
and heeds this call to work can give a proper 
account of his stewardship. 



THE EVANGELISTIC SPIRIT. I 53 




CHAPTER XII. 

THE EVANGELISTIC SPIRIT. 

IDEON spread his fleece to catch the 
heavenly dew; it was dry on all 
the floor, but the fleece was wet. 
The sign, worth all others, that God will 
save souls by our word and work is that we 
are like fleece saturated with celestial moist- 
ure. All the best methods fail without that 
last, best gift, the Spirit's anointing. This 
is a divine enduement and endowment; yet 
there are natural conditions, as the fleece was 
a " condition " of the dew. 

I. No man can expect the evangelistic bap- 
tism who does not heartily accept the evan- 
gelistic principle. The gospel's mission and 
our mission is to seek and to save that which 
is lost. Every believer, being as such sent 
to preach the gospel, is to make the advances 



154 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

and take up positive, personal, aggressive 
Christian work. 

Moreover, we must conceive of our mission 
as to the masses of mankind, not an elect few, 
a select class. To what we invidiously call 
the '* common people " the bulk of the race 
belong, and from them the bulk of disciples 
always have come and will come. When 
Jesus saw the multitudes He was moved 
with compassion. The crowning proof of His 
messiahship was His preaching to the poor; 
and the crowning joy of His work that, while 
rulers derided, the common people gladly 
heard Him.^ 

We have, to guide us, both a divine plan 
and an historic fact. " God hath chosen the 
poor of this world rich in faith and heirs of 
the promises." He has not called many of 
the rich, mighty, worldly-wise, and high-born ; 
but He has called these five classes : the 
" foolish," *' weak," " base," ** despised," and 
"those that are not,"— the nonentities.^ What- 

1 Matt. ix. 36; xi. 5; James ii. I-4. 

2 I Cor. i. 27, 28, ra ytrq uura. 



THE EVANGELISTIC SPIRIT. I 55 

ever we may think of this plan of God, the 
fact is that for nearly two thousand • years 
the successes of the gospel have been among 
the poor, lowly, and outcast; while pharisees 
sneer and cavil, doubt and deride, publicans 
and harlots go into the kingdom. 

The giant foe of human progress has been 
CASTE, the building up of artificial, arbitrary 
distinctions between man and man, — a wall 
of pasteboard in essence ; in effect, a wall of 
adamant. Caste has separated nations ; in 
the same nation, tribes; in the same tribe, 
families ; in the same family, husband and 
wife, sons and daughters. It crushes and 
quenches the very hope of betterment by 
which man is saved from stagnation and 
despair, and dooms him to stay where he 
was born, however low his level. By an 
inexorable fatalism it decrees that, from 
ignorance, superstition, want, and woe, he 
shall have no escape. God would give 
neither sanction nor recognition to such a 
monster as caste, and hence did not choose 
those who would naturally claim caste- 



6 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 



privileges.^ To have treated these superfi- 
cial social distinctions as implying merit or 
virtue would have been to imply a difference 
in human need, as though the Jiigh-born had 
less need to be new born. Therefore does 
God teach us that so far as there is differ- 
ence, He makes us to differ ; and that in the 
fact of sinfulness and condemnation there is 
no difference, and we must make none. 
While, however, God gives no false encour- 
agement to the rich and wise and mighty, 
He throws no discouragement in the way of 
any class, for in calling the lowest he calls 
the highest. What is broad enough for the 
base of the pyramid is broad enough for 
all that is above it. The highest has only 
to take his place among the lowest, and he 
gets the fulness of blessing. 

We have enlarged upon this, because it is 
a fundamental principle of evangelism. In 
God's eyes he only is a true preacher or 
teacher of the good tidings who seeks to 
save souls as such, and who accepts the 

1 2 Kinjis V. II, 12. 



THE EVANGELISTIC SPIRIT. 1 5/ 

gospel's mission and his own as beinrj to the 
whole lost family of man, and not to any 
elect aristocracy. He only has the evangel- 
istic spirit to whom the gospel is the great 
leveller. The worker for souls who will prove 
the winner of souls comes with the same 
gospel to all alike. Like his Master before 
him he is no respecter of persons. 

For any other attitude toward lost men 
there is no adequate apology, even in the 
affinity of culture, refined taste, and sensibil- 
ity. To consult affinity and refinement takes 
the very sinews out of evangelism. F. W. 
Robertson, the " friend of the workingman " 
was asked how, with such superlative refine- 
ment and cultured sensibilities he could 
endure close contact with so much that was 
coarse and rude ; and his answer was : " My 
tastes are with the aristocracy, but my prin- 
ciples are with the mob." The final outcome 
of Sir William Hamilton's philosophy was: 
there is nothing really great on earth but 
man; and nothing really great in man but 
his soul. 



158 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

Again we write it, — as with a pen of iron 
and the point of a diamond, — he only is fit 
to work for souls whose first law is to honor 
all men and despise or neglect no man. 
God's eye-salve has never yet anointed his 
eyes who does not see the greatness of the 
soul in the greatness of its ruin ; who does 
not see all on a level hopelessly, helplessly 
lost without Christ; who does not see that 
the same gospel is sent to, and fitted for, all ; 
and that the smallest measure of capacity 
that is equal to responsible sin is equal to 
voluntary acceptance of salvation. 

2. This principle is the basis oi passion for 
souls, which is its natural if not necessary 
outcome. The believer who begins, not by 
denying, but by confessing, that he is his 
brother's keeper, will find his brother's keep- 
ing getting to be more and more a matter 
not of conscience only, but also of love. 

This passion for souls is the next sign and 
test of the evangelistic spirit. And of all 
human qualifications for winning souls, no 
other can be compared with this. If not the 



THE EVANGELISTIC SPIRIT. I 59 

equivalent of unction, it is inseparable from 
it ; if it be not the dew, it is the fleece that 
holds the dew. 

Francis Xavier, "the apostle of the Indies," 
misguided as he was, flamed with this con- 
suming passion for souls. He washed the 
sores and cleansed the clothes of a crew sick 
with scurvy; rang a bell in the streets of Goa 
to call pupils to his school ; and after a fear- 
ful vision of perils and privations before him, 
as the price of winning isles and empires to 
Christ, he could only cry : *' Yet more, O my 
God, yet more ! " No marvel if during ten 
years he visited fifty kingdoms, preached 
over nine thousand miles of territory, and 
baptized a million persons. 

This passion for souls is God's corrective 
for a fastidious hypercriticism. Dr. Duff met 
some who could not endure foreign missions 
"because they smelt so bad," — like a charac- 
ter in modern fiction who " could n't stand 
the poor smell," — but there is a love that 
makes one oblivious of sights and sounds 
and smells that stand between lost souls and 



l6o EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

salvation. Passion for souls inspires a labor 
of love to which self-sacrifice is nothing, for 
that is the very law of love. See Ignatius the 
martyr facing the fierce Numidian lion in the 
arena and saying, " I am grain of God ! I 
must be ground between the lion's teeth to 
make bread for His people." 

Such voluntary sacrifice inspired by pas- 
sion for souls gives to life its divinest beauty. 
That taunt, "He saved others; Himself He 
cannot save ! " is truth, unconsciously told. 
Poussa the potter, after many efforts to make 
a porcelain set for the Emperor's table, 
despairing of making anything worthy of a 
king's acceptance, flung himself into the fur- 
nace where he was glazing his masterpieces. 
And they say that such heavenly beauty 
never gilded wares before, as made them 
shine. The Chinese sages in this fable were 
writing more wisely than they knew. 

Such passion for souls quickens our in- 
ventive powers, and leads to new devices to 
reach men. There was a poor cobbler with 
spectacles on his nose and an old shoe 



t 



THE EVANGELISTIC SPIRIT l6l 

between his knees, — his forehead and mouth 
indicating great decision of character, and his 
eyes, benevolence, — around whom a group 
of poor children might have been seen sitting 
or standing busy with their lessons. It was 
John Pounds, of Portsmouth, — ** father of rag- 
ged schools." When both Church and State 
left these little waifs to run w^ild to ruin, 
this consecrated cobbler, moved with pity, 
went in person on the streets and quays, 
gathered them in, and taught them lessons 
in reading, and in virtue, temperance, and 
piety. Unknown to fame, compelled to earn 
his bread at his bench, he saved from vice to 
a better life at least five hundred children. 
And it was a very peculiar evangelistic argu- 
ment that he used. He would run after, and 
hunt down, some shy, hungry, ragged urchin, 
and win his trust by putting a hot roast 
potato under his nose. AAd so in his little 
shop, seven feet by fifteen, thirty or forty 
boys would crowd ; nay, they loved him so 
that they would sit outside on the street to 
be near him. 



1 62 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

Such passion for souls brings its reward, 
even here. Sir Humphry Davy, after enu- 
merating his various discoveries in natural 
philosophy and chemistry, added : " But the 
greatest of my discoveries is Michael Fara- 
day ! " — the poor apprentice of a bookbinder 
whom he helped to, an education, and who 
outshone even his illustrious patron. The 
earnest worker who loves souls is on a con- 
stant tour of discovery. He detects fine gold 
even in rough quartz crystals, sapphires in 
clay, opals in sand, diamonds in soot; and 
brings fragrant flowers out of sterile sands 
and foul marshes. 

3. Where the principle of evangelism is 
thoroughly accepted, and passion for souls 
is awakened, there are the two most im- 
portant conditions of that divine endue- 
ment which is called tmctioit, the crowning 
gift of the Holy Spirit for service. He 
who would win souls needs the winning 
grace which only God can give. No words 
can describe this gift, but it may be known 
and felt. 



THE EVANGELISTIC SPIRIT 1 63 

It is a chrism of power, an anointing. It 
is eye-salve to the eyes, to enable us clearly 
to see sin in its enormity and deformity, 
heaven and hell in their reality, and man's 
need and God's grace. It imparts that di- 
vine sense of the powers of the world to 
come which is the grand secret of converting 
power. It touches the tongue, and prepares 
us to speak attractively and effectively the 
message of grace. It is like the holy oil 
poured on Aaron's head and running down 
to the skirts of his garment, communicating 
to the whole man a nameless charm like 
fragrance. 

This is the baptism of fire. Nothing burns 
its way through all obstacles like fire ; noth- 
ing so melts and moulds, so transforms 
and transfigures. It is a baptism of power. 
It gives strength to the weakest and flu- 
ency to the stammering tongue. When 
the Spirit comes on the believer for ser- 
vice, all God's truths are such verities 
and realities that he knows them as truths 
and cannot hold his peace ; he is weary 



1 64 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

with forbearing ; silence is harder than 
speech. 

There is much zeal that, as Dr. Bonar says, 
consists mainly of personal ambition and 
bigotry, love of praise and love of authority, 
pride of talent and pride of denomination, 
with but a fraction of love to God and love 
to man. But when the Holy Spirit inspires 
our zeal, the earthen vessel emptied of self 
is filled with God, — "a vessel unto honor, 
sanctified and meet for the Master's use, and 
prepared unto every good work."^ 

Such a divine gift comes only in answer to 
prayer; and therefore all evangelistic work 
not begun, continued, and ended on our 
knees, gauged by God's standards is a fail- 
ure. Socrates said that his work in Athens 
was to bring men " from ignorance uncon- 
scious to ignorance conscious." Our first 
need is the consciousness of need. We must 
feel that in the Spirit of God alone lies all 
power to convert. Even the truth and the 
blood cannot save unless He applies them. 

1 2 Timothy ii. 2i. 



THE EVANGELISTIC SPIRIT. 1 65 

Saint Antoninus of Florence, in a fable, 
represents Satan as preaching the gospel in 
the disguise of a friar. When asked why 
he, the foe of God and man, proclaimed 
the truth, he answered that nothing is so 
hardening as the gospel preached without 
unction ; and that, as he had no unction, 
it was only a savor of death. The best 
preaching, with the best aids to impres- 
sion, cannot bring one soul to submit and 
commit all to Christ ; but let the Spirit 
breathe on a congregation, and, like blades of 
grass in a breeze, stubborn wills bow. They 
who most honor the Spirit are those whom 
the Spirit most honors. No time is lost in 
waiting for the Spirit. ''TARRY YE . . . UNTIL 
YE BE ENDUED WITH POWER FROM ON 
HIGH ! " 



PART II. 
EVANGELISTIC WORK IN PRACTICE. 




CHAPTER XIII. 

WHITEFIELD, THE FIELD EVANGELIST. 

F history is '* philosophy, teaching 
by examples," no proper discussion 
of evangelistic work can afford to 
pass by this prince of evangelists, who led 
the way as a field preacher. Even Wesley is 
in this respect his pupil, following the lead 
of Whitefield.i 

In the old South Church, at Newburyport, 
Massachusetts, is his cenotaph surmounted 
by a symbol of immortality, a flame bursting 
from an uncovered urn. The epitaph records 
that he was " born at Gloucester, England, 
Dec. 1 6, 1 7 14; educated at Oxford Univer- 
sity; ordained in 1736; that in a ministry 
of thirty-four years he crossed the Atlantic 
thirteen times and preached over eighteen 
thousand sermons." 

1 Wedgwood's Life of Wesley, 177. 



I70 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

This remarkable preacher united the mind 
of a cherub and the heart of a seraph with 
a voice such as is rarely bestowed on any of 
the sons of men. But no natural gifts would 
have made him the evangelist that he was, 
but for his ardent and fervent piety. His 
holy zeal, unselfish love, passion for souls, 
gave to his look, speech, attitude, and action, 
unexampled energy. Probably " no other 
uninspired man ever preached to so large 
assemblies, or enforced the simple truths of 
the gospel by motives so persuasive and 
awful, and with an influence so powerful 
upon the hearts of his hearers.'' 

His career furnishes encouragement to 
those whose early life has been passed in 
sin, but who would spend all their remaining 
years in service to God and to souls. He 
confesses that for sixteen years he hated 
instruction, and wasted money and time in 
the company of youths whose mockery of 
virtue and religion brought him nigh to the 
seat of the scorner in the vestibule of hell. 
But beneath all his early vices ran the under- 



WHITEFIELD. i 7 1 

current of a restless conscience ; and when 
the inn at Gloucester was dark and still, the 
tavern-keeper's boy sat often, late at night 
reading the Bible w4iich he was yet to wield 
as a weapon of such power. 

In his eighteenth year, at Oxford, he joined 
the holy club, led by the Wesleys, known as 
** Methodists " because the members lived 
by rigid rule, and whose threefold aim was 
salvation, sanctification, service. From quiet- 
ism the pendulum now swung to asceticism, 
and, like Luther, Whitefield sought peace 
through fasting, penance, and prayer. He 
cultivated humility by w^earing dirty shoes 
and patched breeches, as though clean shoes 
and a clean heart, wholeness of garments and 
holiness of life, were incompatible ! These 
rigors begat morbid melancholy and then 
a seven weeks' sickness, during which he 
learned his first great lesson, — that simple 
trust in Jesus lifts the load of si7z. 

He began now to devour the Bible, com- 
mune with God, and visit the poor and the 
prisoner. He had a manifest call to the 



1/2 El^ANGELISTIC WORK. 

ministry. Born an orator, at twelve years 
of age he had charmed visitors by his easy, 
graceful declamation, and was wont to imitate 
clergymen, reading prayers and even com- 
posing sermons. His friends pressed him to 
apply for holy orders ; and the fame of his 
powers and piety led Bishop Benson to offer 
to consecrate him at once as a deacon, not- 
withstanding his youth. His humility shrank 
from such a responsible step, but he was 
ordained at the age of twenty-one. 

On the next Sabbath he preached his first 
sermon, and with such simplicity, authority, 
and unction that it was plain God had raised 
him up for a great work. Some complained 
to the bishop that his "enthusiasm had driven 
fifteen people mad : " his quaint reply was 
that he only hoped the madness might last 
till the next Sabbath. He soon left for Lon- 
don, where such crowds thronged to hear 
him that the police had to stand guard. 

The Wesleys had sailed for Georgia, and 
VVhitefield's mind turning the same way, he 
sailed for America in December, 1737. 



WHITEFIELD. 1 73 

Burning with love for souls, he made that 
ocean voyage memorable. The cabin be- 
came a cloister, the steerage a school-room, 
and the deck a church.^ He preached thrice 
a day and oftener on Sunday; and before 
his mighty appeals even the toughest tars 
bowed and bent like reeds in the v.ind. Six 
voyages to England and back succeeded that 
first journey to these shores, and the inter- 
vals were full of ceaseless toil for souls. For 
thirty years he averaged one and a half ser- 
mons a day, visiting over fifty towns and 
cities in New England and as many more 
from New York to Georgia, and at least 
seventy places in Britain. His audiences 
averaged two thousand, and at times swelled 
to incredible size ; some say, at Kingswood 
and Cornwall, to ten thousand ; at Philadel- 
phia, to twenty thousand ; at Boston Common, 
to thirty thousand ; and at Moorfields, to 
sixty thousand ! 

He was driven to the fields by the action 
of ecclesiastics. At Bristol, shut out from 

1 Belcher's Life of Whitefield. 



174 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

the churches, the taunt was flung at him, 
that if he would convert the heathen he might 
try his hand upon the Kingswood coUiers. 
He took up the challenge, and on Feb. 17, 
1739, he first attempted to speak to these 
wild men on that wild common near Bristol. 
A hundred of them came to stare at the 
eccentric stranger, but soon increased to 
twenty thousand ; and down their grimy 
faces the tears rolled and left ''white gutters" 
in the black soot. Nor were those transient 
tears the only proofs of the power of his 
preaching. When, months after, he left Bris- 
tol, a swarthy train followed him and halted 
at Kingswood to spread a feast for him and 
astonish him by a liberal subscription for a 
charity school among the colliers. 

This providential moving of the Pillar 
showed Whitefield that the open field was to 
be his sanctuary. He had not been shut out 
of the churches in vain ; they might have 
shut him in. Two months after his first ad- 
dress at Kingswood, he spoke to vast throngs 
at Moorfields, where not only the abjectly 



WHITEFIELD. 1 75 

poor but the lowest class of the population 
were found.^ He was warned not to go, 
and that he would not return alive. But, 
unattended save by two friends, he stormed 
Satan's stronghold in the heart of London. 
He was treated not only with decency but 
with respect. His evening audience at Ken- 
nington Common was equally attentive and 
courteous, joining in the psalm and Lord's 
prayer as quietly as in any church. And 
the thought dropped like a seed from God 
into his heart, — "Why should I not preach 
where none need go away disappointed?" 

Following the divine leading, he deter- 
mined without regard to the opinion of man 
or his own personal ease to take to the open 
field. At Kennington such a vast host filled 
the river stairs that the watermen had to put 
on hundreds of additional boats, and even 
then their wherries were overloaded by the 
ladies who pressed into them. And thus, by 
no sudden caprice or studied scheme, but by 
simple surrender to the pressure of events 

1 April 29, 1739. 



176 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

and the leading of God's Providence, White- 
field accepted the itinerant life of a field 
preacher, and led into the same path his 
illustrious contemporary, John Wesley. 

To these '' mad notions " of a man who 
could not be kept from preaching the gospel 
by the narrow exclusiveness and stilted state- 
liness of the church of his day, and to the 
"immoderate zeal" which led him to break 
through the restraint of forms, and throw 
away alike liturgy and manuscript, we owe 
the mightiest extempore sermons that ever 
fell from human lips, heard by throngs such 
as never before waited upon any preacher's 
voice. Not only the colliers of Kingswood, 
the miners of Cornwall, and the rabble at 
Moorfields, but the nobility and gentry of 
England and the untitled nobility of Amer- 
ica confessed the wonderful power of his 
preaching. 

Can we learn any secrets of evangelistic 
success from a man who in himself combined 
many of the excellences of Fenelon and 
Massiilon, Loyola and Luther? 



WHITEFIELD. I "J^J 

First, he studied the proper use of his voice. 
Like his Lord before him, ^'^ he opened his 
mouth and taught them." He spoke with 
loud and clear tones, with perfect articulation 
and enunciation. His voice was a great gift, 
but his management of it made it the per- 
fection of the faculty of human speech. It 
had wonderful richness and sweetness ; but 
behind its musical modulations and persuasive 
pathos there lay deep feeling. It was the 
man, back of the voice, that so warmed 
the cold, calculating Franklin and charmed 
the philosophical, sceptical Hume. 

The human voice is the grandest of in- 
struments, and all others are sonorous and 
melodious only as they approximate to its 
perfection. He discovered and developed 
its powers ; he learned to handle, and play 
on, that consummate instrument. Garrick 
said he would give a hundred guineas to say 
" Oh ! " as Whitefield did ; and that, by 
merely v^arying his pronunciation of the 
word, " Mesopotamia," he could make an 
audience tremble or weep. But no natural 



178 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

volume or compass of voice could have ena- 
bled him to reach thirty thousand hearers, 
without the mastery of enunciation. It was 
because he articulated every syllable clearly 
and sharply that his opening words on Soci- 
ety Hill, Philadelphia, were audible two 
miles off, at Gloucester Point. 

If his oratory betrayed genius, it still more 
revealed industry. He trusted to no native 
gifts; his culture of his powers of speech 
was careful and constant. If nature made 
his voice powerful, practice made it omnipo- 
tent, and his elocution was more an acquire- 
ment than an endowment. Here is a hint 
for every preacher. Why should the stage 
or rostrum usurp oratorical culture ? Why 
should actor or orator take more pains to 
amuse or charm, than the preacher to save? 

Whitefield threw life into his speaking. 
Demosthenes made the power to move^ men, 
— as Mirabeau did, '' audace," — the prime 
requisite of eloquence. Whitefield, being 
moved himself, spoke like a man who is 

^ Kll/TJcTiS. 



WHITEFIELD. 1 79 

dealing with eternal issues. There was not 
only melody in his voice, but harmony in his 
whole elocution ; his whole body, mind, and 
heart entered actively into his oratory. 

Whitefield studied the preparation of ser- 
mons. His native fluency tempted to indo- 
lence, but his was no lazy way of preaching. 
His art was so elaborate that it was con- 
ce'aled. Each repetition of a discourse, even 
to the fortieth, showed constant improvement 
in matter and manner, tones and action. 
Even his simplicity was studied. His aim 
was to reach men; and, like others who have 
sought to touch the popular heart, he used 
the dialect of the people and was charged 
with " vulgarisms." But that plain speech 
brought truth home to some whom no pol- 
ished diction could move. While some mur- 
mured because he said that Jesus would 
receive " even the Devil's castaways," by that 
very statement one of those ''castaways" 
had been drawn to Him. To a courtly 
clergyman who complained of ill success, 
Daniel Burgess quaintly replied : " Thank 



l80 EVANGELISTIC WORK, 

your velvet mouth for that! too fine to use 
market language ! " 

Whitefield's appeals were direct and pointed. 
He did not preach over, or before, or around, 
but to, his hearers. It was no poHshed ora- 
tion, labored essay, or empty declamation, 
but a sermon, — a speech to men, — that dealt 
a blow at the individual man and lodged a dart 
in the individual conscience. John Fawcett, 
under the scaffold at Bristol Amphitheatre, 
found the preacher dissecting his soul, as 
*' though he had known his thoughts from 
ten years old." But tenderness qualified his 
directness ; and the mingling of truth with 
love subdued even coarse and brutal natures. 

Whitefield studied illustration, and turned 
even the incidents of the day to use. By the 
furnace fires at Shields, which secured to the 
glass its crystalline purity and transparency, 
he illustrated the uses of adversity. He made 
the storm at sea such a vivid reality to the 
New York seamen that they saw the ship 
sinking, and shouted, '' Take to the long 
boat ! " He so enchanted Chesterfield when 



WHITEFIELD. 1 8 1 

describing a blind beggar stumbling over the 
edge of a precipice, that he cried out, " Good 
God ! he is gone ! " as he jumped forward to 
save him. He could build into the structure 
of his discourse the occurrences of the mo- 
ment. The shadows flitting across the floor 
become emblems of human life; the light- 
ning and thunder of the gathering storm, the 
glance of the eye and the sound of the voice 
of God; then the bow on the retiring cloud 
represents the grace that paints even wrath 
with hues of promise. 

He even dared the boldest personifica- 
tion. Cold abstractions were quickened into 
concrete realities. Gethsemane, Golgotha, 
Tabor, became living scenes; and on one 
occasion he besought Gabriel to " stop ! '* 
that he might *' yet bear to heaven news of 
one sinner reconciled to God " ! No wonder 
the fiddler and trumpeter that went to annoy 
him found their instruments struck dumb, 
and that Tuppen, who meant to stone him, 
lost his own stony heart; or that Franklin, 
under his charity sermon, gradually won by his 



1 82 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

appeals, first determined to give his coppers, 
then his silver, then his gold, and ended by 
emptying his pockets into the hat ! The boy 
Rodgers let fall his lantern; the planter 
could not find time to " plant a sprig," nor 
the ship-builder to lay a plank. He riveted 
all eyes and ears. 

This great evangelist illustrates what There- 
min suggests, that eloquence is a virtue. His 
power lay deeper than any gifts of voice, 
graces of gesture, or vividness of imagery. It 
was the play of moral and spiritual forces. 
The whole man spoke. His passion's secret 
lay in earnestness. Life slumbers under winter 
snows, but bursts into bloom under summer 
sunshine. Whitefield himself said that hear- 
ing Tennent preach showed him more and 
more that no one can preach further than 
he has experienced. '' Like people, like 
priest." A man will not make others feel 
what he does not. '' I am persuaded," said 
he, '' that the generality of preachers talk of 
an unknown and unfelt Christ. Many con- 
gregations are dead because dead men are 



WHITEFIELD. 1 83 

preaching to them. Betterton, the actor, 
said that the players would empty the play- 
house if they spake like the preachers ; and 
told the Lord Bishop of London that while 
actors speak of things imaginary as though 
real, the preachers too often speak of things 
real as though imaginary." ^ 

His preaching was thoroughly Evangelical. 
His thousands of sermons were variations 
on two key-notes : man is a sinner, but may 
be forgiven ; man is immortal, and will in- 
herit heaven or hell. It seemed like a new 
religion; but, as John Bacon said, it was only 
the old revived and treated as though the 
preacher meant every word he said. 

His fondness for his w^ork made his labor 
a relief and rest He never spared himself; 
and when failing health compelled him to 
put himself on short allowance, he preached 
only once a day and tJirlce on Sunday. He 
counted not his life dear unto himself, and 
left a maxim worthy of Saint Paul : " We are 
immortal till our work is done." 

1 See page 75, note. 



84 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 




CHAPTER XIV. 

HOWARD, THE PRISON EVANGELIST. 

URKE has characterized Howard's 
work as " a circumnavigation of 
charity." 

He visited all Europe, not to gratify an 
appetite for novelty, not to satisfy a refined 
and aesthetic taste, not to survey sumptuous 
products of architecture and art, not to make 
money, or to get health, or to cultivate elect 
friendships. His was the genius of humanity. 
He went to descend into deep dungeons, to 
dare the contagion and infection of laza- 
rettos ; to explore the vastness and to sound 
the deepness of human poverty and misery, 
want and woe; to visit the sick and the 
prisoner in dark cells and gloomy hospitals 
and pour in the light of sympathy, and to 
tender the ministry of an angel. 



HOWARD. J 85 

Such a man may well be selected as the 
second example of evangelistic work in 
practice, and with the more propriety as we 
design to show that some of the most con- 
spicuous examples of evangelism are from 
the ranks of the laity. 

Howard has been called the philanthropist 
of prison reform ; he was more than this, 
he was the prison evangelist ; for his ultimate 
aim was not simply to relieve bodily distress 
and temporal want, but to carry the gospel 
of light and love and life to those who 
would in no other way be reached ; to preach 
the gospel to those who were sick and in 
prison, and, in ministering to them, minister 
to Christ. 

He was born — according to the inscrip- 
tion of the statue in St. Paul's — in Hack- 
ney, Sept. 2, 1726. He inherited none 
of the benevolence which he displayed, if 
tradition rightly ascribes to his father the 
penurious habits of a miser. He was of a 
frail body, and had only a fair education; 
at school was rather slow to learn, and never 



I 86 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

showed either briUiance or acuteness. But 
even as a boy his frankness, conscientious- 
ness, and sterhng moral quaHties drew to 
him Richard Price, the foremost scholar of 
the school, w4io became his life-long friend 
and aided him in his reports on prisons. So 
defective was Howard's intellectual training 
that he never learned to compose, even in 
English, with grace and accuracy, and his 
private correspondence was marred by mis- 
takes even in grammar and in spelling. 

His father's death, when he was about 
sixteen, left him the heir of an estate and 
a moderate fortune of perhaps thirty-five 
thousand dollars in money, which he was 
to receive in full in his twenty- fourth year. 
Soon after he thus became his own master, 
he took a tour on the Continent; and on his 
return suffered for years from ill-health. 
While a lodger in the house of an invalid 
widow lady, Mrs. Loidore, he was very sick ; 
and her considerate nursing so won his heart 
that he married her, in his twenty-fifth year, 
though she was more than twice as old as 



HOWARD. 187 

himself. It was an act of grateful recognition 
of her service to him in his need. 

After a happy married life of two or three 
years, her death left him a second time free 
of all home ties ; and again he went on a 
tour of travel, in this instance in the direction 
of Portugal, where the terrible earthquake of 
Lisbon, in 1755, had left untold sorrow and 
suffering behind it. 

What strange ways God takes to train his 
workmen for their work and sphere ! This 
voyage providentially shaped Howard's future 
career. A French privateer captured the 
vessel in which he sailed, and he was taken 
prisoner with the rest, and cast into a filthy 
dungeon at Brest, where for a week the cap- 
tives almost starved. Then he was removed 
first to Morlaix, and afterwards to Carpaix, 
where, though he was treated with more 
humanity, he was still a prisoner and subject 
to many privations and vexations. He him- 
self confesses that it was what he underwent 
during this experience that drew out his 
sympathies toward the unhappy inmates of 



1 88 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

similar jails. Upon his release, he made a 
prompt and successful effort to secure relief 
for his fellow-prisoners, and then retired to 
his estate at Cardington. 

There he set himself to improve the con- 
dition of his tenants; and in 1758 married 
his second wife, who became a true yoke- 
fellow in all his efforts to make the cottages 
at Cardington models of beauty and home 
comfort He began by improving the phy- 
sical and material condition of his tenantry ; 
he sought to make their homes cleanly and 
healthy, well-watered, lighted, and drained ; 
then to stimulate their intellectual life ; but all 
was only on the way to their moral and spirit- 
ual elevation. He was a kind of patriarch, 
using his authority to enforce industry, sobri- 
ety, and morality, and to promote public 
worship. He aimed at nothing short of an 
ideal community. 

In 1765 his second wife died, shortly after 
having borne him a son. His melancholy 
bereavement drove him from home. After 
visiting Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Rome, and 



HOWARD. 189 

Naples, he again returned to Cardington. In 
1773 he was made high sheriff of Bedford, 
and these official duties brought him once 
more into the interior of prisons, though in 
a new capacity; there he found proofs of 
unjust imprisonment, and saw calamities and 
distresses that he yearned to relieve, and 
determined if possible to remove. 

About the close of 1773, now forty-seven 
years old, he set out, at his own costs, upon 
his tour of prison inspection. Fifty years 
before, the Marshalsea, which Dickens has 
described in " Little Dorrit," held three hun- 
dred and thirty prisoners, in a wretched con- 
dition : at night, in wards not sixteen feet 
square, fifty persons were sometimes locked 
up, half in hammocks, and the other half on 
the floor, almost stifled, and sometimes actu- 
ally dying for want of fresh air. Yet even 
this does not equal what Howard found and 
describes. In cells scarce large enough for 
one person, close and dark, he found three 
persons confined for the night, with a few 
wisps of straw on a damp floor as their only 



190 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

bed ; the infirmary for the sick consisted of 
but a single room. He reported the results 
of his observation to the House of Commons, 
and secured the passage of two bills which 
essentially reformed prison discipline, and 
which at his own expense he had printed 
and posted to every jailer and warder in the 
kingdom. Then he visited the jails of Lon- 
don and Wales, to see if the provisions of 
these bills had been enforced ; and carried 
his investigations into houses of correction 
and city and town jails. He found jail fever 
and loathsome small-pox destroying multi- 
tudes, not only of felons, but of unfortunate 
debtors whom the unjust legislation of those 
days classed with criminals. 

He was prevailed upon to accept a nomi- 
nation for the House of Commons ; but God 
had better work for him to do, and he was 
defeated. He visited the Scotch and Irish 
prisons, and found the latter in a worse state 
than any in England. Then he carried his 
researches into France, Flanders, Holland, 
and Germany, where he rejoiced in a much 



HOWARD. 191 

improved condition of things. Like Shaftes- 
bury in later times, he was satisfied with no 
information at second hand. Fearless of dan- 
ger and forgetful of self, he penetrated to the 
very depths of every prison to which he 
could get access, and testified of what his 
own eyes had seen and his own senses 
perceived. He would wait to see convicts' 
messes weighed out, and then pocket a piece 
of the green and mouldy biscuit given to 
them, as a substantial evidence against the 
captain of a convict hulk. 

Another survey of English prisons after 
his return showed some improvement in their 
management; but in Cornwall, for instance, 
he found a prisoner whose door had not been 
opened for four weeks, and whose cell was 
lined with filth. In 1776 he went to the 
Swiss jails, as well as those of England and 
Wales, and the next year published his book 
on the ** State of. Prisons," etc. That book, 
which showed what an astonishing mass of 
important and valuable matter one man may 
collect, and what heroic exposure one may 



192 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

dare for the sake of humanity, Hfted Howard 
to the rank of a leading philanthropist. 

What John Howard endured in this circum- 
navigation of charity no one can imagine. 
He breathed and lived in an atmosphere so 
foul that he could not take passage in a post- 
chaise, but had to ride on horseback, because 
the exhalations from his clothes were so 
offensive to fellow-travellers, even the leaves 
of his memorandum-book being so tainted 
that they had to be spread out for hours 
before using. He went into cells and felons' 
w^ards where even jailers would not go with 
him; where were damp floors, covered per- 
haps with water an inch or two deep, and 
the straw or bedding was laid on the floors ; 
where there were neither sewers nor vaults ; 
and where, lest the jailers should have to pay 
window-tax, they stopped even these small 
apertures ! " Temperance and cleanliness were 
his only preservatives ; but trusting in divine 
Providence, and believing himself in the way 
of duty, he visited the most noxious cells and 
dungeons, fearing no evil." He averaged 



HOWARD. 193 

forty miles a day in his travelling tours, and 
liv^ed on the plainest diet, abjuring both 
animal food and all alcoholic drinks. 

In 1778 he went to Holland, Flanders, 
Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, devot- 
ing a fortune of forty-five thousand dollars, 
left him by his sister, to the further prose- 
cution of his work. At Prague he found the 
monastery of Capuchin friars a place of riot 
and revelry, and brought them to promises 
of amendment by threatening them with 
summary exposure. After a further tour of 
forty-six hundred miles on the Continent, 
and nearly seven thousand miles of travel in 
Great Britain, in 1780 he published an appen- 
dix to his book, and in 1781 went to the 
Continent, to carry on further investigation. 

In Russia he learned from the man who 
inflicted the punishment of the knout, that 
he sometimes received orders to do it in 
such a manner as to secure the death of the 
victim, which he did by a few well-directed 
strokes on the sides, which would tear away 
huge masses of flesh. 



194 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

In 1784, after publishing a third edition of 
his work, he retired to Cardington. He was 
now nearly sixty years old, and the time of 
rest seemed to have come. But of late the 
question of infectious disease in prisons had 
so occupied him that he determined to give 
the last years of his life to fight that terrible 
pestilence then known as '' The Plague." 
Nothing but personal experience would suf- 
fice. He set sail in an infected ship, and 
underwent confinement in the lazaretto, that 
every custom of quarantine might be per- 
sonally tested by himself, probably intending 
to build a lazaretto himself on the most im- 
proved sanitary principles. He inspected, 
with great risk, the lazaretto at Marseilles ; 
then, at Toulon, the arsenal and the galleys; 
then went to Italy, Malta, Smyrna, and the 
Golden Horn ; then to Venice, closely exam- 
ining the hospitals, actually undergoing quar- 
antine in the Venetian lazaretto, and with his 
own hand whitewashing his room, to prove 
the beneficial results of such treatment of 
the apartments. 



HOWARD. 195 

It was while at Venice that he heard of a 
scheme to erect in his honor a statue in 
London. His remonstrance was so prompt 
and vigorous that the project was laid aside. 
He had already recorded his desire that over 
his dust only a plain marble slab should be 
raised, with his name and age, and the motto : 
*' My hope is in Christ." Nothing could be 
more distasteful to him than any such public 
recognition of his unselfish labors. He w^as 
not hving for human honors or rewards. 

In 1789 he left England never to return. 
At the village of Cherson on the Dnieper, 
near the Crimea, he visited a young lady 
sick with malignant fever, and caught the_ 
fatal infection ; and early in January, 1790, 
he departed this life, in the sixty-fourth year 
of his age; as Jeremy Bentham says, "dying 
a martyr, after living an apostle." 

Such is the simple story of a life that led 
all others in prison evangelism, toiling per- 
sonally to turn prisons and jails, hospitals 
and lazarettos, into places of comfort and 
healing, and to turn the prisoners and victims 



196 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

of disease in them from evil to good. What 
a preaching of Christ was that ! The impulse 
to such evangelism can only be derived from 
Him v^ho left the throne of glory and the 
palace among the stars, to enter personally 
the stable at Bethlehem, and to be called the 
Nazarene ; to identify himself with the aban- 
doned and the outcast, feed the hungry, heal 
the leper with his touch, lift up the fallen, ac- 
cept a cross of shame between two thieves, and 
go into the very sepulchre, that he might make 
the darkness of the tomb forever light to 
those who should follow him into the grave. 
John Howard went everywhere to publish 

THE PROGRAMME OF THE KINGDOM. 

"THE SPHIIT OF THE LORD GOD IS 
UPON ME. 

Because the Lord hath anointed me 
to preach good tidings to the meek ; 

He HATH SENT ME 

To BIND UP THE BROKEN-HEARTED, 

To PROCLAIM LIBERTY TO THE CAPTIVES, 

And THE OPENING OF THE PRISON 

To THEM THAT ARE BOUND. 

To PROCLAIM THE ACCEPTABLE YEAR OF THE L0RD."1 

1 Isa, Ixi. I, 2. 



FINNEY. 197 



CHAPTER XV. 



FINNEY, THE REVIVAL EVANGELIST. 




HARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 
seems to have been raised up, at 
a peculiar juncture in the churches 
of this land, to introduce a new era of revi- 
vals of 7'eligion, The prevalent condition 
was one of "dead orthodoxy," — soundness 
of faith with little of the salt of godliness, 
and still less of vital spiritual power. 

The antidote to stagnation is agitation, 
and to effect this, extraordinary means 
are often required. '' When the tale of 
bricks is doubled, then comes Moses." Mr, 
Finney was a born reformer, impassioned 
to the borders of impetuosity, positive to 
the borders of bigotry, and original to the 
borders of heresy. With a scourge of sting- 
ing cords, he lashed the hypercalvinistic 



198 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

fatalism and cold pietism of the churches, 
and, by the very antagonism which he awak- 
ened, stirred to their depths the stagnant 
waters. 

Born at Warren, Connecticut, in 1792, up 
to his twenty-fifth year he had no real relig- 
ious training. The region in the State of 
New York to which his family moved was a 
virtual wilderness. He picked up a common 
education and even a little knowledge of 
Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; but, though always 
a learner, he never was a scholar. 

In 1 81 8 he entered a law-office in Adams, 
Jefferson County, New York. Hitherto 
what little he had known of the gospel 
was mostly repelling: the preaching he had 
heard was monotonous, mechanical, and half 
fatalistic ; and he was practically as ignorant 
as a heathen. The frequent references to 
the Mosaic Code which he met in legal 
studies led him to buy a Bible ; and his 
casual glances into the *' perfect law of 
liberty," like a passing glimpse of his face 
in a mirror, showed him what manner of 



F/iVXEY. 199 

man he was, and made him restless and 
troubled in conscience. 

Occasional attendance at preaching ser- 
vices and prayer-meetings impressed him with 
the lack of plain and practical presentations 
of truth, and of faith in the answers promised 
to prayer. If the Bible be true, all men are 
lost sinners, and ought to be told, in a way 
too clear to be misunderstood, their condi- 
tion and the way of salvation. If the Bible 
be trustworthy, those who pray to God ought 
to believe Him and trust His word. These 
early impressions, made on him before con- 
version, gave direction to the whole current 
of his after-life. 

The practical lack of faith in prayer on 
the part of professed children of God was a 
stumbling-block over which he well nigh fell 
into scepticism. When asked at a weekly 
meeting in Adams if he would like to be 
prayed for, he frankly said he could not see, 
according to their own confession, that God 
heard their prayers. But further reading of 
the Bible revealed the reason : they did not 



200 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

look for answers, — tuibelief ; and they did not 
meet the scriptural conditions, — disobedience. 
At the age of twenty-nine, Mr. Finney was 
compelled to face the question of the per- 
sonal acceptance of Christ as a Saviour. 
Pride led him to hide the concern about his 
soul, which would not let him rest He 
vainly tried to pray, but his convictions grew 
clearer and heavier, and the way of salvation 
plainer and straighter. So strong was the 
Spirit's striving with him that it was like a 
hand-to-hand struggle : the question seemed 
put to him directly, *'Will you accept now — 
to-day?" And he replied, " I will, or die in 
the attempt." He went up into the woods, 
determined to give his heart to God before 
he ever cam.e down again. And he did. His 
sin was a crushing weight, but he laid hold 
of the promise,^ " Ye shall seek Me, and find 
Me, when ye shall search for Me with all 
your heart" With a faith that from the first 
was very childlike, he cried : " Lord, Thou 
canst not lie ; I take Thee at Thy word ; I do 

^ Jcr. xxix. 13. 



FINNEY. 201 

search with all my heart, and I know there- 
fore that I have found Thee." 

Then he continued in prayer till peace 
flooded his soul. He did not know that this 
was conversion; and his peace begat new 
anxiety lest he had grieved the Holy Spirit, 
and had lost conviction and concern because 
he had lost the Divine moving within. But 
he said to himself, " If ever I am converted, 
I will preach the gospel." 

In the evening he went to his office. 
There was in the room neither fire nor light, 
yet it seemed to him he was in a flood of 
glory, face to face with Christ, whose look 
broke him down in tears of strange joy. He 
wept aloud, confessing sin and praising God, 
unconscious of the lapse of time, enrapt as 
in a trance. He received then and there a 
baptism of the Spirit, that went through him 
body and soul, like an electric wave. Love 
flooded his whole being, till he cried out, 
" Lord, I can bear no more." Whatever 
may be the human philosophy of such an 
experience, he from his death-hour looked 



202 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

back to it as the most remarkable experience 
of his life. 

From that day Charles G. Finney was 
filled with the Holy Ghost. He had been 
taught by experience, before he had been ^ 
taught by theory, justification by faith as the 
secret of peace with God, and entire self- 
surrender as the secret of the peace of God. 
He had been both accepted in the Beloved 
and anointed for service. He declared at 
once and at all times that he was the Lord's. 
He felt that he must preach, and was not 
only willing to do so, but unwiUing to do any- 
thing else ; and as preaching meant to him 
no formal pulpit oratory, but direct dealing 
with souls, he began at once, and his words 
to individuals were like barbed arrows that 
could not be withdrawn. 

Mr. Finney was a marked proof that the 
Spirit of God can instantly make a man a 
new creation, in whom old things pass away, 
and all things become new; and can as in- 
stantly qualify for the work of winning souls. 
In a moment the world had lost hold, and 



FINNEY. 203 

God had taken hold ; and going forth at 
once to save others, he met doubters, scep- 
tics, caviUers, and found, given him at the 
moment, the answer which shot down and 
shattered all their defences of fallacy, sophis- 
try, falsehood, and self-righteousness. Almost 
every one he spoke to was converted ; and 
sometimes, without a spoken word, convert- 
ing power came. He was so wrought upon 
by his sense of the lost state of souls about 
him, and the powers of the world to come, 
that his looks, his tears, his own evident emo- 
tion, his very presence, moved others. 

Of course such a sudden, remarkable con- 
version set the town ablaze with excitement, 
and the people instinctively thronged the 
prayer-meeting. He went and found the 
place packed with people, and pervaded with 
an awful silence of God. Unasked and un- 
prepared, he rose, and, as God gave him 
utterance, told somewhat of his experience, 
and spoke of the reality of things unseen. 
The minister followed with humble confes- 
sion of his own unbelief and inconsistency, 



204 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

and acknowledged that he had been a stum- 
bling-block in the way of souls. 

Unconsciously to himself, Mr. Finney had 
begun his career as a revivalist. Nightly 
meetings followed almost without arrange- 
ment or announcement, and the work spread. 
He worked especially among the young 
people whose leader he had been, and but 
one of them all remained unconverted. He 
visited his parents at Henderson, and shortly 
they found Christ, and the work of grace 
spread there also. 

Meanwhile, filled with God, he scarcely felt 
need either of food or sleep. His visions of 
God's glory were like the days of heaven 
upon earth, but he was strangely restrained 
from telling others ; and he specially noticed 
that whatever turned his eyes within, and 
away from Jesus, even for the analysis of 
his motives and feelings, robbed him both 
of peace and power. He could do nothing 
while any obstacle, or even cloud, intervened 
between him and God. But, while fellow- 
ship with Him was unhindered, he pre- 



FINNEY. 205 

vailed as a prince both with God and with 
men. 

He was thus also taught, experimentally, 
travail for souls, its nature and necessity. 
His interest for others would not allow him 
to rest, until prayer brought assurance of 
answer. 

He had no training in theology, and to 
many his views of Scripture and Christian 
doctrine seem erroneous. But Orthodoxy 
had become cold, dead, barren; a new 
method of presenting truth was needed to 
arouse disciples and alarm the unsaved. 
God permitted Mr. Finney perhaps unduly 
to emphasize man's freedom and responsi- 
bility because these truths had been obscured 
and obstructed by undue stress upon man's 
inability and God's sovereignty. A resort 
to extremes often restores balance. Men 
must be taught not to wait on God in list- 
less inaction for blessings that must crown 
their own endeavor. 

In 1822 Mr. Finney was received under 
Presbyterial care as a candidate for the min- 



206 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

istry. He did not enter that holy office, 
however, through college or seminary doors. 
God doubtless saw that a "system of theology " 
might fetter his original force and cool his 
ardor and fervor, or make him only an ex- 
ponent of some school of opinion; and so 
He sent him out with the freshness of His 
anointing upon him, an illustration and proof 
of what Divine tuition can do for a man 
whose only teacher is the Spirit, and whose 
one book is the Bible. 

He had no desire or expectation of labor- 
ing among cultured city congregations, and, 
soon after being licensed, began labors as a 
missionary evangelist. His first fields were 
Evans' Mills and Antwerp, and were a type 
of his life-w^ork. He had a double aim : 
first to arouse the Church, lead false disciples 
to give up their delusive hope, and idle 
disciples to take up work for Christ; and 
secondly, to awaken the unsaved to feel their 
lost state and commit themselves at once, by 
some signal visible act, to at least a declared 
interest in their own salvation. These things 



FINXEY. 207 

should be made emphatic, for they are what 
distinguish Mr. Finney from other evan- 
geHsts. In various towns and cities, from 
Buffalo and Rochester to Troy, Providence, 
and Boston, eastward, and New York City, 
Philadelphia, and Reading, southward, and 
even in England and Scotland, he left the 
savor of his mighty influence. 

In studying such a man of mark, we are 
tempted to see only those bolder, stronger 
features which are like mountains in a land- 
scape, and which defy imitation. Nature 
does sometimes break her die after mould- 
ing a great man. But some secrets of I\Ir. 
Finney's power are communicable; and, as 
an evangelist and winner of souls, he fur- 
nishes many most helpful suggestions. 

He came in the spirit and power of Elias, 
like whom he shone conspicuous for coura- 
geous candor, bold preaching of the law, con- 
suming zeal for God, and power in prayer. 

His candor made men hear, and gave 
him great power even with cavilling scep- 
tics. Men instinctively respect truth, and 



208 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

the truthful man who is honest and bold, 
though he hits hard and strikes home ; while 
they as instinctively detect and detest a 
pulpit politician. Mr. Finney scorned traps 
of logic or tricks of rhetoric, and had no aim 
but to deal truly and faithfully with every 
hearer, using great simplicity in language 
and illustration. 

Trained as a lawyer, he preached law. 
He showed God's right to command, and 
the rightness of His commands ; that per- 
fect government demands perfect law and 
perfect obedience, and rests on the sanc- 
tions of reward and penalty ; and that wrath 
against sin is as much a perfection as love 
toward goodness. Then he proved all men 
to be wilful transgressors, and therefore both 
without excuse and without hope, save as 
they bow to His will to be saved in His way. 
Such preaching wrought, as it always will, 
deep conviction. His sermon on the ''Wages 
of sin " struck like a thunderbolt. 

Then after this ploughshare of law had 
crashed through the refuges of lies, tearing 



FINNEY. 209 

up by the roots selfishness and self-right- 
eousness, with gentle hand he let fall in 
the fresh furrows the seed steeped in his 
own tears. Often for one, two, three hours 
he would in one mighty plea unfold gospel 
truth, first by strong reasoning grappling 
with conviction, then by awful appeals 
arousing conscience, then by tearful tender- 
ness persuading the heart and moving the 
will at once to cJiocse Christ and say so. 

He flamed with zeal, like Elias repairing 
the broken altar of the Lord, and hewing 
in pieces the false prophets of Baal. He 
attacked with heroic bravery all formality 
and hypocrisy, unbelief and unfaithfulness, 
and the pretences and pretexts behind which 
sinners hid a heart full of hate toward God 
and crodliness. 

His power in prayer was marvellous. In 
1853, after a long drought, he so wrestled 
with God for rain, that Vv'hile he* prayed a 
clear burning sky of brass was suddenly 
black with clouds, and before the service 
closed floods drowned his voice. To hear 
14 



2IO EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

him pray was to feel that you yourself had 
never prayed. Like all such princes of God, 
he lived under a vivid sense of the powers of 
the world to come. He thoroughly believed 
and felt the reality of unseen things, and 
above all the unseen Spirit, and that in His 
anointing lies the secret of all true service 
to souls, and power in preaching. He pre- 
pared sermons, but most of all he prepared 
himself; and at times his mightiest messages 
were messages of the moment. 

Zoroaster's followers were enjoined to 
quench their fires from time to time, and 
rekindle them from coals in the Temple of 
the Sun, that they might be reminded that 
fire was heaven's sacred gift. Blessed is the 
man who daily resorts to those celestial 
altars whence only come the coals which 
set our lips aflame ! 



CHALMERS. 211 



CHAPTER XVI. 

CHALMERS, THE PARISH EVANGELIST. 




HIS name is especially worthy of a 
permanent record, for- Chalmers 
was one of the men who have led 
the way in the practical solution of that 
great problem of our civilization : *' How to 
deal with the masses in our great cities." 

At his sixty-fifth year, we find this great- 
est of Scotchmen on fire with all his youth- 
ful ardor, in this mission to the masses in 
Edinburgh, where, as in Ephesus, the gold, 
silver, and precious stones of the sacred 
fanes and palaces were in strong contrast to 
the wood, hay, stubble, of the huts and 
hovels of the poor. "With sublime devotion, 
Chalmers at this advanced age, when most 
men retire from active and arduous toil, 
entered upon the most difficult experiment 



212 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

of his life, that he might demonstrate by a 
practical example what can be done for 
the poor and neglected districts in a great 
metropolis. 

The West Port, in the ''old town" of Edin- 
burgh, was the home of a population whose 
condition may be described by two words, 
poverty and misery. He undertook to redeem 
this heathen district by the gospel, planting 
in it schools and a church for the people, 
and organizing Christian disciples into a band 
of voluntary visitors. The name " territorial 
system " was attached to the plan as he 
worked it, and has passed into history under 
that sonorous title. In St. John's parish, 
Glasgow, he had already proved the power 
of visitation and organization. Within his 
parochial limits he found 2,i6i families, 845 
of them without any seats in a place of wor- 
ship. He assigned to each visitor about fifty 
families. Applications for relief were dealt 
with systematically, and so carefully, yet 
thoroughly, that not a case either of scanda- 
lous allowance or scandalous neglect was ever 



CHALMERS. 213 

made known against him and his visitors. 
There was a severe scrutiny to find out the 
fact and the causes of poverty, to remove 
necessary want, and remedy unnecessary 
want by removing its cause. The bureau of 
intelHgence made imposture and trickery 
hopeless, especially on a second attempt. 
And poverty was not only relieved, but at a 
cost which is amazingly small. While in other 
parishes of Glasgow it averaged two hun- 
dred pounds to every thousand of the popu- 
lation, and in many parishes of England it 
averaged a pound for every inhabitant , in St. 
John's it was but tJiirty pounds for a thotisand 
people. 

It was an illustration of heroism in these 
latter days, when a man past threescore 
years, whose public career, both with his 
pen and tongue, had made him everywhere 
famous, gave up his latter days to elevate 
the physical, mental, moral, and spiritual 
condition of a squalid population in an 
obscure part of the Modern Athens. His 
theory was that about four hundred fami- 



214 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

lies constituted a manageable town parish ; 
and that for every such territorial district 
there ought to be a church and a school, 
as near as may be, free to all. This district 
in West Port contained about this number of 
families, which were subdivided into twenty 
"proportions," each containing some twenty 
families. 

A careful census, taken by visiting, re- 
vealed that of 411 families, 45 were attached 
to some Protestant Church, 70 were Roman 
Catholics, and 296 had no church connec- 
tion. Out of a gross population of 2,000, 
1,500 went to no place of worship; and of 
411 children of school-age, 290 were grow- 
ing up entirely in ignorance. It is a curi- 
ous fact that these 41 1 families averaged 
one child each of appropriate age for 
school, and that of these 41 1 children there 
were about as many growing up untaught 
as there were families without church 
connection. This careful compilation of 
statistics revealed that the proportion of 
ignorance and of non-attendance at chnrch 



CHALMERS. 2 1 5 

correspond almost exactly ; in other words, 
families that attend a place of worship 
commonly send children to school, and the 
reverse. 

Another fact unveiled by this effort at city 
evangelization was that about one fourth of 
the inhabitants of this territory were paupers, 
receiving out- door relief, and one fourth were 
habitual, professional beggars, tramps, thieves, 
and rijfrajf. 

Here was a field indeed for an experiment 
as to what the Church could do in her mis- 
sion among the masses. Chalmers was hun- 
gry for such an opportunity; it stirred all 
his Scotch blood. So he set his visitors at 
work. But he did not himself stand aloof. 
Down into the '' wynds " and alleys and 
*' closes " of West Port he went; he presided 
at their meetings, counselled them sympa- 
thetically, identified himself with the whole 
plan in its formation and execution, while 
his own contagious enthusiasm and infec- 
tious energy gave stimulus to the m.ost faint- 
hearted. 



2l6 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

He loved to preach to these people not 
less than to the most elegant audiences of 
the capital, or the elect students of the uni- 
versity. He would mount into a loft to meet 
a hundred of the poorest, as gladly as ascend 
the pulpit of the most fashionable cathedral 
church crowded with the elite of the world's 
metropolis. And those ragged boys and 
girls hung on his words with characteristic 
admiration. 

Two years of toil, with the aid of Rev. 
W. Tasker, enabled Dr. Chalmers to open a 
new free church in this district. The Lord's 
Supper was administered ; and out of one 
hundred and thirty-two communicants, one 
hundred were trophies of the work done by 
him and his helpers in that obscure district. 
With a prophetic forecast Chalmers saw in 
this success the presage of greater possibili- 
ties, and a practical solution of the problem 
of city evangelization ; and hence he con- 
fessed it was the joy of his life and the 
answer to many prayers. 

The plan pursued by Dr. Chalmers was 



CHALMERS. 2 1 / 

not at all like the modern evangelistic ser- 
vices, — an effort spasmodic, if not sporadic, 
— preaching for a few weeks in some church 
edifice or public hall or tabernacle, and then 
passing into some other locality, leaving to 
others to gather up results and make them 
permanent. From the most promising be- 
ginnings of this sort, how often have we been 
compelled to mourn that so small harvests 
have been ultimately gleaned ! He organ- 
ized systematic work that looked to lasting 
results. The ploughman and the sower of 
seed bore also the sickle and watched for the 
signs of harvest. And whenever the germs 
of a divine life appeared, they were nurtured, 
cherished, guarded, and converts were added 
to the church, set at work, kept under foster- 
ing care, and not left to scatter, wander at 
will, or relapse into neglect. 

As to his mode of dealing with pauperism, 
the sagacious Chalmers saw that, while a 
ministry of love to the poor, sick, helpless, 
was a first necessity, it would be unwise and 
hurtful to their best interests to encourage 



2l8 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

them to depend on charity. The church 
must not be an asylum in which indolence 
and incompetence and improvidence should 
take refuge. The poorest must be educated 
to maintain, not to sacrifice, self-respect, and 
must be compelled to form and maintain 
habits of self-help, industry, economy, thrift. 
Instead of clothing the poor with the half- 
worn garments of the better class, he would 
have them taught to save money worse than 
wasted on tobacco, drink, and vicious indul- 
gence, and buy their own garments. And 
the results of this wise policy were seen in 
the gradual and rapid improvement in the 
appearance of the attendants at church: rags 
gave way to respectable raiment, and it was 
not the cast-off clothing of their betters, 
either. 

Chalmers had no less ambition than to 
ameliorate and finally abolish pauperism ; and 
his success in St. John's parish, Glasgow, had 
proven that he was master of the situation ; 
and no one can tell what results might have 
followed, but for the Poor Law, enacted in 



CHALMERS. 



219 



1845, which, by the admission of a statutory 
right to pubHc relief, encourages improvi- 
dence, weakens family ties among the poor, 
conduces to a morbid satisfaction with a state 
of dependence, and thus sows the seed of the 
very pauperism it professes to relieve and 
reduce. 

Nothing in Chalmers was more a secret of 
success than the utter absence of the caste 
spirit. With a royal mind and manners, — 
a king among men, — he could descend to 
the lowest, with sublime unconsciousness of 
condescension. 

The Christian missionary makes slow prog- 
ress in Africa, because he can offer the negro 
no true brotherhood except in another world. 
But the Mohammedan Moor says even to the 
most degraded Hottentot: ''Come up and sit 
beside me ; give me your daughter and take 
mine ; all who pronounce the formula of 
Islam are on a level of equality, here and 
hereafter." ^ 

1 W. S. Biunt. 



220 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

SPURGEON, THE PASTORAL EVANGELIST. 




ABAKKUK was bidden to write upon 
the wayside tablets, in plain large 



letters, that great motto which be- 
came the doctrinal centre of Paul's theology, 
and the historical centre of the great Refor- 
mation : " The just shall live by faith." 

Plain preaching of gospel truth on every 
occasion, — preaching so plain that the mes- 
sage may be caught even at a cursory 
glance, understood by the feeblest mind, 
and retained by the most treacherous mem- 
ory, — that is the inmost secret of evangelistic 
success ; for it not only evangelizes every 
hearer, but it makes every believer an 
evangelist. 

Lord Shaftesbury said of Mr. Spurgeon, 
that his great secret is simply and solely 



SPURGEON. 221 

that from the heart he preaches Jesus Christ 
and Him crucified ; and trains a body of 
men who, Hke himself, get at the hearts of 
their auditors.^ We select him as an example 
of evangelistic work done, and evangelistic 
power wielded, in ordiiiary pastoral spJieres ; 
and as a proof that a minister of Jesus Christ 
may, without going outside of his own pulpit 
and church, do the work of an evangelist 
and make full proof of his ministry. 

The spacious Metropolitan Tabernacle is 
built for the accommodation of the imtltitndes, 
not for architectural or artistic display. 
There are no sittings out of the range of 
the preacher's eye, fit only for the blind, 
or out of the range of his voice, fit only for 
the deaf; there are no echoes to dispute 
with the preacher the privilege of being 
heard. Here is the first condition of suc- 
cess : Mr. Spurgeon has a building in which 
from four thousand to six thousand people 
can be gathered, every one of whom can 
hear every word he says. 

1 Life of Shaftesbury, iii. 397. 



222 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

The entire service of worship exalts God. 
The short, thick man, with low forehead, 
large cheeks, flat nose, and capacious mouth, 
is not in appearance such a man as is chosen 
for a hero ; he becomes good-looking, how- 
ever, when he opens his mouth boldly to 
preach the gospel. The music, led by a pre- 
centor without choir or instrument. Is not 
elaborate and is scarcely '' modern," and the 
vast audience does not always keep ti7ne ; but 
there is a great volume of praise, like the 
sound of many waters. In comparison with 
that singing, now and then interrupted by a 
comment on the meaning of the verses, the 
most silvery song from an operatic quartette, 
and the swell of the grandest organ, are only 
a parody on worship. 

And oh, ^\idX praying, peculiar for that ele- 
ment of adoration in which nearly all public 
prayer is lacking ! His confession of sin is 
humble, his supplication fervent, his interces- 
sion importunate; but when he praises and 
extols God, it is an eagle soaring toward the 
sun, and bearing you on its wings. You see 



SPURGEOiV. 223 

the glory of God ; you feel smitten with the 
splendor of His power and wisdom, goodness 
and holiness. 

The reading of Scripture is interspersed 
with brief, pithy, suggestive, and studied com- 
ments, making the Word of God plain and 
practical, and preparing the soil for the ser- 
mon. That is preaching indeed. The text 
is the sermon contracted ; the sermon is the 
text expanded. Christ alone is lifted up, and 
He draws all men unto Him. The people 
press upon him to hear the Word of God. 
Whatever the method of administration, tJie 
impression is that of a free church, and that 
so long as there is a seat, you, whoever you 
are, are as welcome to it as the highest 
princes of the realm. 

No doubt Mr. Spurgeon is a man of un- 
common gifts. But his genius is not the 
source of his success. He speaks very sim- 
ply, very naturally, very earnestly, and ex- 
temporaneously. While you do not get the 
idea that there is any lack of pains in prepara- 
tion, you have before you no pulpit elocu- 



224 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

tionist, or even orator, but simply a man 
who has something to say to you from God, 
and who says it as well as he can. He evi- 
dently bends every power and purpose to 
the one end of bringing sinners to Jesus, and 
he does move men. Some pulpit Ciceros 
draw forth praise : '' How pleasantly he 
speaks ! " this Demosthenes compels men 
to say, '' Let us go to Jesus." 

Mr. Spurgeon has been as severely criti- 
cised as any preacher of his day. But if 
effectiveness is the test, he is the greatest 
preacher of this century. The chief sur- 
geon of France boasted to Sir Astley 
Cooper that he had performed a difficult 
feat in surgery one hundred and sixty times ; 
he confessed that ^' in every case the patient 
lost his life, but the operation was very bril- 
liantr Mr. Spurgeon regards no sermon as 
a success that does not prove effective to 
save and to sanctify. 

For more than thirty years there has been 
a constant onward movement in his public 
career. Dickens remarked that '' coming 



SPURGEON. 225 

out" is easy, but it is a matter not so easy 
to prevent '' going in " again. At seventeen 
years of age, Cliarles Spurgeon was the boy- 
preacher at Waterbeach ; that was thirty-six 
years ago. He went to the world's metropo- 
hs in 1853, and yet he still preaches to as 
full a house, and with as much energy and 
enthusiasm, as ever. 

From his first sermon, he has shown the 
spirit of an evangelist. He assumes that 
there are those before him who have not 
heard of Christ, and he speaks as if their 
salvation hung on his lifting up Christ. He 
looks for results, and he has them regularly, 
constantly. The Lord has added to the 
church daily for thirty-five years. The 
people flock to hear him because they get a 
blessing. They can hear concert singing and 
eloquent speaking elsewhere; can find splen- 
did galleries of art, and see theatre-acting, 
elsewhere ; but where else can they hear such 
praying, praising, preaching, and get such 
lasting blessing? 

What frantic efforts are made, often, to get 
15 



226 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

an audience ! What resorts to advertising, 
worldly expedients and attractions, dramatic 
acting and often clownish trifling, with a 
necessity for constant change of programme 
to keep up the excitement ! Here is a young 
man who goes to London, not yet twenty 
years old, begins preaching to a '* handful " 
of people in a common church building. 
There is nothing to make a sensation ; but 
the house is soon full, and must be enlarged. 
During the enlargement he conducts wor- 
ship at Exeter Hall, and for three months 
even that is crowded. The congregation 
return to the remodelled church edifice only 
to find the throngs greater than ever, and a 
large Tabernacle is planned. Before that is 
erected, the monster Music Hall in Surrey 
Gardens is used for worship; and for three 
years from seven thousand to ten thousand 
souls throng that great assembly-room. In 
1 86 1 the new Tabernacle is opened, and 
from the first it is full; and during the re- 
pairs to that building in 1867, Agricultural 
Hall is crowded every Sunday morning by 



SPUKGEON. 227 

twenty thousand people to hear that same 
simple, earnest preacher. 

But this is not all. Mr. Spurgeon has 
aimed to make the church of which he is 
pastor a centre of evangelizing influences. 
It is the mother of churches, missions, Sun- 
day-schools, preaching stations, orphanages, 
almshouses, — every conceivable form of 
gospel effort and benevolent work. And the 
church is not exhausted by this manifold 
activity; for all this Christian, evangelistic, 
benevolent work reacts upon the church life : 
the water is poured on the widely extended 
roots of the tree, but is returned in the leaves, 
flowers, and fruit which grow on the branches. 
Because the church scatters, it increases. 

Even this is not all. The Pastor's College 
has been training thousands of young men 
to become preachers of the gospel; and 
while they are tanght to preach, they are 
set at preaching. The work is one of faith 
and prayer, supported by voluntary gifts; 
any one, however ignorant or poor or lowly, 
who shows zeal for God and passion for 



228 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

souls, capacity and devotion for the work, 
can get there a fit education for preaching 
a plain gospel in a plain way. And every 
Sunday students or graduates from this 
College may be found supplying some fifty 
to one hundred chapels in the metropolis 
and its suburbs. In addition to this the Col- 
portage Society employs men who act both 
as salesmen and as evangelists. 

Mr. Spurgeon's tongue is a mighty evan- 
gelizing agency; but his pen and the press 
make his influence even mightier, because 
they extend it farther. Regularly reported 
by a short-hand writer, his sermons, cor- 
rected by himself, and published in the 
cheapest form, are given to the public in 
perhaps twenty different languages ; their 
circulation probably falls little short of a 
million, and they are read in newspaper 
columns by hundreds of thousands more; 
while his " Sword and Trowel " and his 
books have indefinitely multiplied his ave- 
nues of influence, and the multitudes into 
contact with whom he comes. 



SPURGEON. 229 

It may be doubted whether God ever gave 
to his people an example more encourag- 
ing to the ordinary preacher and pastor. 
Here are evangelistic work and evangehstic 
success, both on a colossal scale, yet all 
within the circle of one church and its activ- 
ities, headed and led by a thoroughly Evan- 
gelical and evangelistic pastor. He is a man 
of faith and prayer; he studies the Bible as 
the one book, and preaches Christ and noth- 
ing else ; he scorns all mere devices of logic 
and rhetoric, but speaks with the demonstra- 
tion of the Spirit and the persuasive power 
of God. He expects results from every ser- 
mon and service of worship ; conducts all his 
church enterprises as God's work rather than 
his own ; refuses all invitations to lyceum 
lectures and platform addresses, committee 
meetings and social festivals ;. invites no out- 
side help from evangelists, and holds no 
"protracted meetings;" corrupts the sim- 
plicity of church-buildings by no devices of 
elaborate art, and the simplicity of church 
worship by no devices of worldly attraction ; 



230 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

Stays at home and attends to his own business ; 
and yet has the greatest working church in 
the world to-day, and from that church has 
sent out more preachers and Christian evan- 
geHsts than any theological seminary within 
the same space of time ! 

Any church may be an evangelistic centre, 
and any pastor an evangelistic preacher, if 
there be a will. Wesley's quaint motto, 
" All at it, and always at it," is the key to 
the problem. The preacher must lift up 
Christ. Let us not be afraid of the repeti- 
tion which Sydney Smith regarded as the 
secret of impression. The word inciUcation is 
full of ethical suggestion: it means "to tread 
in with the heel" (/;/, calx). Men never tire 
of hearing the old, old story; it is the oldy 
but on^y, remedy for sin and sorrow. Let us 
depend upon the gospel itself as the attract- 
ing power, unmixed with human poetry and 
philosophy. Mixtures of incongruous things 
make brittleness. Preaching that corrupts 
God's gospel with man's folly lacks consist- 
ency and coherence ; it is doomed, like Nebu- 



SPURGE ON. 231 

chadnezzar's image ; it is on a wrong basis, 
and will fall and be ground to powder. 

There is a story of a marble-cutter, with 
chisel and hammer working a block of stone 
into a statue. A preacher who was looking 
on said, '' I wish I could, on hearts of stone, 
deal such transforming blows ! " *' Perhaps 
you might," was the workman's quiet answer, 
"if, like me, you worked on your knees." We 
are deeply and unalterably persuaded that 
\hQ power of prayer is the lacking, if not the 
lost, power of the Christian ministry of to- 
day. The work done on the knees is the 
only work that evinces or effects the trans- 
formation which is a supernatural sign that 
God is with the workman. The Bible, studied 
on the knees, becomes a new book ; the cross, 
seen from the knees, wears a new halo ; the 
sermon, wrought out on the knees, thrills with 
a new power. Mr. Spurgeon's whole work 
is vitalized by the breath of prayer, which Is, 
after all, the breath of God. 

While the w^ork on the new Tabernacle was 
yet scarcely begun, in 1859 Mr. Spurgeon 



232 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

and one of his praying deacons met on the 
ground one evening, after the workmen had 
gone, and there besought God for a blessing 
on the work and its safe completion, and 
that no one engaged upon it might suffer 
harm. The prayer was answered in abun- 
dance ; not a man was hurt in the entire 
course of building. Again, in 1861, as the 
work neared completion, there were put on 
record the fact that four thousand pounds 
were needed to open it free of debt, and the 
prayer that God would bestow the needed 
money. The pastor and leaders in the move- 
ment affixed their signatures to this covenant 
of prayer. Four months later, a record was 
added that the prayer was answered in abun- 
dance and in anticipation of the actual need. 
This covenant of praise was similarly signed; 
they set to their seal that God is true, and 
asked His continual blessing on the new 
building. Shortly after, the house, built at 
a cost of one hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars by a comparatively poor congre- 
gation, was dedicated without debt. A work 



SPURGEON. 233 

SO begun and so carried on must have upon 
it God's seal. 

If we could have in our churches to-day 
a revival of plain preaching and prevailing 
prayer, without one new condition or addi- 
tion every such church would become a 
centre of evangelism. We must stop seek- 
ing for, and planning for, success of a worldly 
sort or upon a worldly basis. All the attrac- 
tions and adornments of the world cannot 
make up for the lack of spiritual power. If 
the angel no longer comes down and stirs 
the pool, vainly shall we call in the quacks 
of Jerusalem to impregnate the waters with 
medicinal drugs. We must cry to Heaven 
till the angel comes down and imparts heal- 
ing virtue. 

God's purpose in raising up Spurgeon 
seems to be to rebuke, both in pulpit and 
pew, apathy and idleness, unbelief and world- 
liness ; to show that no new measures are 
needed ; that the old gospel is still the power 
and wisdom of God unto salvation. One 
anointed tongue and pen have been at work 



234 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

for a generation; wherever that voice has 
reached or that pen scattered through the 
press its miUion leaves, there the sacred fires 
have been kindled. Let us learn ! and from 
closet and pulpit, in family and assembly of 
believers, let us pray the Lord God of Elijah 
for the fire from above, till even the unbe- 
liever is compelled to shout, ** The Lord He 
is God!" 



SHAFTESBURY, 



235 




CHAPTER XVIII. 

SHAFTESBURY, THE PHILANTHROPIC 
EVANGELIST. 

HEN Admiral Foote, in the harbor of 
Bangkok, received the king of Siam 
on board his flagship, the Christian 
commander asked a blessing at dinner. 
" Why," said the king, " you do just like the 
missionaries ! " ''I too am a missionary," 
was the reply. 

Recently one has passed away, whose pub- 
lic life of over fifty years was linked with 
more active philanthropies than any man 
before him ; and who, though heir to estates 
and titles, found no human being, however 
poor, wretched, outcast, or filthy, whom he 
would not visit on an errand of mercy in any 
place, however dark and dismal. 

Finding the condition of Insane patients 
In hospitals, workers in mines and factories. 



236 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

dwellers in tenement houses, and the out- 
cast population of towns and cities, a disgrace 
to Christian civilization, he, like Michael 
Angelo, criticised ," by creation, not by find- 
ing fault," and set himself to create a new 
state of things, moved by an evangelistic 
purpose to spread the blessings of the 
gospel 

He carried on his investigations in person, 
and then in person carried out his benevo- 
lent schemes. He went into the worst 
quarters of London, at midnight, where the 
vermin of society hide ; to the vagrants' 
hiding-places in dismal vaults and under 
arches, to bring homeless wretches to the 
ragged school, and sit at their side to speak 
to them words of hope and love, and awake 
longings for a better life, — exchanging a night 
of rest for one of sleepless toil, that he might 
introduce to the blessings of a home the 
poor outcast. 

We may find this same man in the chair 
at great anniversary meetings, eloquently 
addressing vast throngs ; there is no part of 



SHAFTESB UR Y. 237 

the grand battlefield where Christianity con- 
fronts the foes of God and man and seeks 
to right human wrongs, but he is there to 
watch the fate of the conflict, kindle new 
enthusiasm in the war of the ages, and take 
up arms against the foe. 

Again, he is in the House of Commons or 
of Lords, pleading for remedial legislation, 
forcing commoners and peers to face the 
facts of English society, unveiling the evils 
which he has himself explored, carrying 
through Parliament scores of bills of relief 
for the neglected operatives and the op- 
pressed workingmen, and measures of reform 
for the unfortunate and outcast classes. By 
this man's importunate and resolute plea, 
hours of labor are shortened, sanitary and 
educational provisions secured, cruelties 
abolished, and crimes abated. He befriends 
alike the little chimney-sweeps and the shoe- 
blacks, the outcast and the criminal ; for his 
motto, like that of Haller, is " CJiristo in 
pauperibics^ 

Again, he might be seen distributing prizes 



238 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

at the flower shows. He valued these as 
encouragements to window gardening, gentle 
habits, and happy homes; as occasions of 
mixing with the people, and bringing together 
those whom social distinctions ordinarily 
separated ; and many are the little hands he 
caressed and the lips he kissed, from among 
the children of the poor, as he rewarded their 
care of their mute little plants. 

The earl might be found meeting with 
the coster-mongers, encouraging them to 
habits of thrift and neatness ; teaching them 
to care even for their donkeys, and, in order 
to identify himself with them, himself buying 
a donkey and a barrow and then lending 
them, with the Shaftesbury arms embla- 
zoned on the barrow, to his poorer fellow- 
costers. He told them if they had any 
grievances to be redressed to write to him, 
and to be sure to add to his name, *' Coster." 
When the grateful coster-mongers met, a 
thousand strong, and presented him with a 
donkey, he rose to receive him, put over 
his neck his own arm, and said he could 



SHAFTESBURY. 239 

wish no more than to be as patient, unmur- 
muring, and faithful as that donkey; then, 
as the animal was led from the platform, 
he facetiously accepted the chair which the 
donkey had vacated. 

Shaftesbury might be found familiarly talk- 
ing to the homeless boys at Saint Giles's 
Refuge, questioning them as to their habits 
of life, means of livelihood, lodging-places; 
appeahng to their better natures, encourag- 
ing them to industry and honesty, virtue and 
piety, and promising to use his influence 
with the government to grant a frigate for a 
training-ship, and to institute refuges and 
schools for them. The shoe-blacks all knew 
him, and called him *' Our Earl." 

Again, we find him in the midst of four 
hundred professed criminals. That was a 
most unique gathering. Forty notorious 
thieves put their names to a *' round-robin," 
asking him to meet men of their class ; and 
with no companion but Thomas Jackson, 
the " thieves' missionary," he confronted an 
assembly from which all but professed 



240 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

criminals were rigidly excluded. And there, 
after opening devotional exercises, he frankly 
asked them of their manner of life, and as 
frankly they confessed the crimes by which 
they lived. He besought them to forsake 
the old life for a new career ; and when they 
told him that they " must either steal or die," 
and that "prayer, however good, was not food 
for an empty stomach," he planned in their 
behalf the emigration scheme that paved the 
way for hundreds to begin life anew, under 
more hopeful surroundings. 

Once he stood in the midst of a throng 
at Guildhall, met to commemorate his eigh- 
tieth anniversary. The highest and noblest 
were there, with the lowest and humblest; 
and outside, the flower-girls, the coster-mon- 
gers with donkeys and barrows, in holiday 
dress, and the ragged-school children, — all 
come to salute the old man of fourscore who 
had proved himself the greatest benefactor 
of his generation ! 

How long will it take us to learn that the 
condition of the common people is the gauge 



SHA FTESB URY. 24 1 

of the commonwealth? Robert Peel gave to 
his daughter a splendid riding-habit, as a 
birthday gift; but it held the germs of mahg- 
nant typhus, caught from the poor husband 
over whom the seamstress, who wrought its 
embroidery, had thrown it, when he shook 
with the chills of a fatal fever. And from 
that garment the rich man's daughter took 
the terrible infection, and the riding-habit 
was exchanged for the shroud. 

The safety of the highest is bound up with 
the lowest. Society avenges all neglect of 
her poor and outcast ones: the capstone of 
the pyramid sits insecurely when the base is 
unsafe. Shaftesbury saw this, and his hfe- 
long purpose and passion were to uplift to a 
better estate those who were lowest and least. 

Urged again and again to accept office, 
with its honors and dignities, he replied, as 
to Palmerston in 1855 : "I cannot satisfy my- 
self that the call to accept ofhce is a divine 
call ; but I am satisfied that He has called me 
to labor among the poor.'' From the point 
of view of the poor and working classes, he 
16 



242 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

habitually looked at every question. What 
he bestowed on the poor was not pity nor 
patronage, but sympathy and service, — going 
into the worst quarters to carry toys to the 
little ones ; moving among them on holidays, 
as one of them; reading and praying at the 
bedside of their sick and dying; and, most 
wonderful of all, never knozvn to make even 
the most trifling promise to them which he left 
ujifnlfl,lled. In one winter ten thousand 
basins of soup and bread made in his own 
house were distributed among them. 

Shaftesbury was an evangelist as well as 
a philanthropist. His Evangelical doctrine 
inspired his evangelism. He believed in the 
depravity of the natural heart, in the necessity 
of the new birth and trust in atoning blood, 
and in a future state of reward and punish- 
ment. Having no authority for a probation 
in the next life, he sought to improve the 
opportunities of this. His whole faith and 
life moved about a threefold centre, — the 
divinity of Christ, the cross of atonement, 
and the coming of the Lord. 



SHAFTESBURY. 243 

He could be found himself taking part in 
evangelistic services such as were so success- 
fully held in Exeter Hall for non-church 
goers. He rejoiced in such efforts to reach 
the neglecters of worship, and in the absence 
of all discrimination between rich and poor, 
high and low. 

It is hardly credible that up to within 
about thirty years English legislation actu- 
ally hindered evangelization, forbidding the 
gathering of even a small assembly for wor- 
ship in a private house. This relic of bar- 
barism was through his influence swept from 
the statute book, and so another obstacle 
was removed out of the way of reaching the 
neglected with the gospel. 

But Shaftesbury's evangelism was private 
and personal. He did not exhaust his zeal 
in public efforts to secure legislation : never 
did he lose a chance of bringing before an 
individual or a community the claims of 
personal religion. 

His evangelistic spirit showed itself in his 
generous and constant giving. To him the 



244 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

common phrase, *' munificent bequests," had 
no meaning. What munificence can there 
be in bequeathing to purposes of benevo- 
lence what can be no longer used for pur- 
poses of self-indulgence? He did believe in 
munificent donations, and kept himself poor 
by his ceaseless charity. But he illustrated 
his own principle, of antedating the pleasure 
of the recipient by the joy of the donor, and 
also the final rewards of sacrifice for others 
by the reverence and gratitude showered upon 
him while yet living and doing good. He 
held nothing but his conscience to be his 
own, all else being subject to the calls and 
needs of suffering humanity. No wonder 
that he was the constant recipient of gifts 
from those he sought to bless, — not paintings 
and statues only, but touching memorials of 
the love of the poor: over his bed a sampler 
worked by factory girls ; upon his bed a 
patchwork coverlet made by the ragged- 
school children ; in fact, by day and by night 
he was literally clothed with the tributes of 
the grateful poor whose lifelong friend he was. 



SHA FTESB UR V. 245 

His life illustrated the vicarious law : "He 
saved others ; himself he cannot save." His 
self-giving to the cause of the poor and 
friendless was a costly one : it cost pain of 
body and exquisite suffering to his keen, 
sympathetic sensibiHties, and cares and anxi- 
eties that left even on his face the pathetic 
lines of a visage marred by sorrow. But 
what a recompense of reward is now his, who 
'* could not bear to leave this world with all 
the misery in it," even for a heaven in which 
there is no sorrow. 

A most important fact and factor in 
Shaftesbury's life must not be passed by. 
The religious impulse of his whole character 
and career is directly traceable to Maria Millis, 
his pious old nurse, who, before he was seven 
years old, taught him of Jesus, and at w^hose 
side he learned the prayer which he never 
failed to use till his dying day. Neglected 
by his own parents, the evangelist of Parlia- 
ment owed to this evangelist of the nursery 
the first lessons he learned in the school of 
Christ. The watch she left to him he wore 



246 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

on his person as a reminder of the sacred 
touch by which she set in motion and regu- 
lated the deHcate mechanism of his being, 
nor would he allow it to be displaced by the 
costliest chronometer. 

His burial scene is itself a history. In 
the great Abbey a mourning nation crowds 
about his bier, on which lie, side by side, 
floral tributes of crown princesses and flower- 
girls; and when it is borne to its simple 
sepulchre, thousands throng the streets, 
every man with hat uplifted, and almost 
every bonnet clad in crape. Artisans and 
laborers, factory hands and chimney-sweeps, 
seamstresses and flower-girls, deputations 
from the homes and refuges and training- 
ships, mission organizations and charitable 
societies, — all are therewith draped banners; 
and the hearse is preceded by the coster- 
mongers' band, playing *' Safe in the arms 
of Jesus ! " 

Such, in brief, was the life of a man of 
whom the Duke of Argyll said, that *' the 
social reforms of the last century have been 



SHAFTESBURY. 247 

mainly due to the influence, character, and 
perseverance of one man, — Lord Shaftes- 
bury." The motto of his family, embodied 
and adorned in his hfe, was 

" LOVE — SERVE." 



248 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

MOODY, THE EVANGELIST OF THE PEOPLE. 




R. MOODY, what is the way to 
reach the masses with the gos- 
pel?" "Go FOR them!" was 
the quaint and characteristic answer; and it 
expresses the hfe principle of Dwight L. 
Moody. 

From the beginning of his career as a 
Christian, nothing has been more character- 
istic of him than his aggressive evangelism. 
He has never waited for open doors to pre- 
sent themselves ; he has gone to closed 
doors and thrown them open. H^e has not 
waited for others to come to him ; he has 
gone after them, from the days when he 
gathered into Sabbath-school his own class 
from the street, till now. His motto has 
been: *' Launch out into the deep and let 



MOODY. 249 

down your nets for a draught!" If there 
be one lesson of his hfe that will be long 
remembered, it is this practical proof of 
what one man with no early opportunities 
or social advantages, with neither wealth nor 
culture, can do, with God only as his patron 
and helper. 

Mr. Moody, like any true w^orkman of God, 
avoids all personal prominence ; and there is 
no doubt that encomiums lavishly used on 
the Lord's laborers are out of place : the only 
time for eulogy is when the time comes for 
the elegy. But if there was ever a man since 
John Wesley who could claim the world as 
his parish, it is Dwight L. Moody. His life 
may be divided into four marked periods : 
first, as a Sunday-school worker ; then, as the 
organizer of a church for the people ; then, 
as an evangelist on both sides the sea ; and 
finally, as an educator of youth. 

In all these departments his success may 
be easily traced to his singleness of aim. 
He sees and feels the destitution of the great 
masses of the people; and instead of saying 



250 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

to others, "Go and carry the gospel to them," 
he goes himself. When he went into the 
street and gathered in that first class of 
rough, ragged, dirty urchins, and sat down 
among them to teach them out of God's 
Word, he struck the key-note of all his sub- 
sequent career: going after soids. Every 
step of success marked a new stage of prog- 
ress. If one class of gamins could be gath- 
ered out of the street, and reformed and 
reclaimed to God, why not a hundred? And 
so the work grew, until a mission Sunday- 
school on the North Side of Chicago, and 
then the Chicago Avenue Church, were the 
result; and the Sunday-school teacher found 
himself the unexpected centre of a great 
evangelistic church in the metropolis of the 
West. 

Meanwhile his knowledge of the Word 
and his power in handling it were growing. 
The man of one book was getting a strange 
education in the school of Christ. In that 
book were his grammar and lexicon, his logic 
and his philosophy, his poetry and his ora- 



MOODY. 251 

tory. And as he studied and mastered it, 
his imagination grew chaste, his style pure, 
his EngHsh correct and elegant, his argument 
convincing, his appeals persuasive. He was 
getting God's university education, — learning 
that greatest logic, the " demonstration of the 
Spirit; " that highest science, the "knowledge 
of God ; " that loftiest philosophy, the " mys- 
tery of grace." Here was his analysis of 
human nature, his universal history, his 
dictionary of language, his system of ethics, 
his tutor in homiletics, and his encyclopaedia 
of illustrations. 

Like ApoUos, he became mighty in the 
Scriptures ; and those who once sneered at 
his enthusiasm and ridiculed his English 
were glad to sit at his feet who was taught 
of God. And so he who began as a humble 
Sunday-school teacher, and had grown to the 
founder of a church for the people, came by 
insensible degrees to be an evangelist every- 
where sought and welcomed. From Chicago 
he began to go out more and more fre- 
quently and widely on evangelistic tours, 



252 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

and everywhere rapid results followed: the 
reaper overtook the ploughman, and the 
treader of grapes him that sowed the seed. 
He had learned to preach simply, — let us 
rather say he had not lear7ied to preach 
otherwise; and in the unaffected language 
of nature, uncorrupted by the fastidious 
culture of the schools, he spoke face to face 
with men; and they heard him. Sprightly 
and vivacious, with a touch of humor as well 
as pathos, direct and pointed in his appeals, 
urging to an immediate decision, and feeling 
his dependence on the Spirit of God, he 
compelled all classes to acknowledge that 
he was a man of power. And yet God gave 
him grace to be humble ; not to think of 
himself more highly than he ought to think, 
but to feel that he was himself nothing, and 
that God was all. 

In 1872 he and Mr. Sankey crossed the sea 
to begin an evangelistic campaign in Great 
Britain and Ireland. God set His seal on that 
work in such a marvellous manner that it 
became plain that Chicago and the Chicago 



MOODY. 253 

Avenue Church were no longer to held and 
confine Mr. Moody. And their return to 
America was the signal for that amazing series 
of special services, evangelistic meetings, and 
Christian conventions which have made the 
entire United States the field for his tillage. 

Of these services abroad and at home we 
have no need to write, for both American 
and British readers are familiar with them. 
But it is generally conceded that since the 
days of Wesley and Whitefield no man has 
ever addressed audiences so vast, or urged 
home the vital truths of the gospel more 
effectively and powerfully. 

Northfield was his birthplace and the 
home of his boyhood. It had attractions of 
its own. His mother still lived there, and 
there he determined to make his home. It 
is a beautiful spot; the view from his front 
porch is surpassed nowhere for picturesque- 
ness : the lower spurs of the White and 
Green Mountains are seen to the north and 
west; the sinuous Connecticut flows just in 
the middle ground of the picture. 



254 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

Mr. Moody had long felt the disadvantage 
of his early lack of education ; and he con- 
ceived that one of the great demands of the 
day is for an education for the daughters of 
plain people in farming and manufacturing 
communities, who cannot afford to pay for 
style, but are the backbone of the Common- 
wealth. Partly as an experiment, not him- 
self knowing whereunto this would grow, he 
added somewhat to his own house, and 
opened it for a school. The price was to 
be nominal, — it is now one hundred dollars 
a year, — the Bible to be the basis of every- 
thing and the centre of the scheme of cul- 
ture. Twenty girls filled this house, and 
others clamored for admission. A small 
brick building was put up on the other side 
of the road, and that was filled and more 
room needed. Then an opportunity was 
afforded of purchasing ample grounds to 
the north and cast of Mr. Moody's home, 
and it was done. In 1879 East Hall was 
built, with rooms for about sixty students ; 
then Bonar Hall; in 1884 Marquand Memo- 



MOODY. 255 

rial Hall; then Recitation Hall in 1885, which 
Mr. Moody says was '' sung up " by Mr. 
Sankey; and now Weston Hall is added, and 
Talcott Library is in process of erection, — 
the whole property being worth probably two 
hundred thousand dollars. Applicants must 
be fifteen years old and in good health, and 
must pass an examination in the initial and 
rudimentary branches. The students do most 
of the domestic work, mainly to lessen ex- 
pense and to promote sensible ideas of the 
dignity of work. The aim is to send out 
young women trained in all the best elements 
of an English education, and inspired with 
Bible knowledge and a missionary spirit. A 
Ladies' Aid Society is organized to lend money 
to needy and worthy students, the loan to be 
repaid into the fund as they are able. 

One thing leads to another. The Mt. 
Hermon school for boys, two or three miles 
southwest, and on the other side of the river, 
was Mr. Moody's next step. A fine farm of 
four hundred acres, suddenly found to be in 
the market, was bought for a nominal sum. 



256 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

In 1885 five brick cottages were built, then 
Recitation Hall; and in 1886 Crossley Hall 
and the Dining Hall. And here Christian 
young men come to get an education pre- 
eminently in the Word of God and in evan- 
gelistic work. Mr. Moody does not expect 
to graduate from this school thoroughly 
equipped ministers of the gospel, but, as he 
says, skirmishers, — Christian workers fitted to 
handle the Word of God skilfully, and go and 
work personally among the masses in fields 
not ordinarily reached. 

The establishment of a permanent school 
for evangelists is one of the greatest needs 
of our day. There are many whose circum- 
stances preclude an extended course of 
study, — poor men, men advanced in years or 
having families, who desire to qualify them- 
selves by a short course of study in the Eng- 
lish Bible for such teaching, Bible-reading, 
lay preaching, and Christian work as they 
may be able to do. We do not read the 
signs of the times aright, if there be not a 
demand for some such training schools for 



MOODY. 257 

Christian workers. Our colleges and even 
our theological seminaries are training Chris- 
tian ministers and scholars. But there are 
many who cannot go to college or seminary, 
who have passion for souls, love for the 
Word, capacity to work, and whom God has 
touched with the celestial fire. They will 
never be great men, nor scholars, nor trans- 
lators of the Bible, nor theological profes- 
sors ; but, properly trained in the Word of 
God and for His work, they may become a 
mighty agency in evangelization. To us it 
seems as though Mr. Moody had been 
specially raised up of God to encourage and 
perhaps to found such a school for Christian 
workers. But there ought to be many, in 
different parts of our land and of the world. 
The disproportion between our workers and 
the field is painfully obvious. We cannot 
supply the needs of a world by our present 
educational system. We need imperatively 
some other and supplementary institution 
for the training of laymen for the work of 
God. 

17 



258 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

We feel constrained to add, at risk of being 
misunderstood, that we believe some of our 
theological schools lack in a scriptural and a 
spiritual atmosphere. There are elaborate 
lectures on theology, church history, homi- 
letics, and kindred themes, and courses of 
study in Hebrew and Greek exegesis ; but 
theology is often taught more from its po- 
lemic than its practical side ; church history 
is too much a cold review of old controver- 
sies, and homiletics is often simply the art 
of constructing a finished literary address. 
A few months of direct evangelistic labor 
will do more for a man's practical qualifica- 
tion for the work of preaching the gospel 
than years of study of the art of preaching, 
from an intellectual point of view. We yearn 
to see theology taught from a biblical and 
spiritual and practical side, teaching young 
men not simply how to split hairs, or throw 
up defences, or handle controversial weapons, 
but how to use Bible truth for the salvation 
and sanctification of souls. We should like 
to see the first book of church history, 



MOODY. 259 

namely, the Acts of the Apostles, so thor- 
oughly mastered as that students should 
learn how men anointed by the Holy Ghost 
go forth to win souls and organize churches ; 
and learn to analyze those first apostolic 
sermons and reproduce their methods of 
handling prophecy and pressing home Evan- 
gelical truth, as modern missionaries train 
their converts and lay helpers. We should 
like to see homiletics taught more as a 
divine art of "■ thinking God's thoughts after 
God," men forgetting the literary standard 
in the engrossing aim after power, caring 
less for the defectiveness of the essay and 
more for the effectiveness of the appeal. 
We could even forego a little of Hebrew 
and Greek learning, if necessary, that men 
might know more of the English Bible, 
might master its contents, know what it 
teaches, get some adequate conception of 
its beauties, and be able to present its tes- 
timony to the great themes of redemption. 
We would not abate the zeal for a thoroughly 
educated and qualified ministry ; but we 



260 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

yearn to see men filled and thrilled with the 
Holy Ghost, with passion for souls, with a 
divine enthusiasm for missions, with self- 
forgetfulness, with holy ardor and fervor in 
God's work. Cannot something be done to 
increase in all our educational institutions 
the scriptural, spiritual tone, and send out 
men, not coldly intellectual to preach ser- 
mons complete homiletically but powerless 
spiritually; but rather at white heat, glow- 
ing with seraphic earnestness, full of the 
gospel, trained in the Word of God, able to 
wield the sword of the Spirit with the power 
of the Holy Ghost? Cannot the training of 
the schools be so combined with actual ex- 
perience in the work of winning souls, as 
that young men shall not be withdrawn too 
much into the class-room and the study, and 
lose the quickening impulse of constant con- 
tact with souls and personal work for Christ? 
Certainly Mr. Moody's conferences and sum- 
mer schools are suggesting and supplying a 
lack. They magnify three things till they 
fill the whole horizon of thought, namely, 



MOODY. 261 

the Word of God, the person and work of 
Christ, and the person and work of the Holy 
Ghost. No man can attend them without 
being impressed with the riches of the Bible, 
the all-sufficiency of Jesus, and the necessity 
of a Divine anointing for service. No wonder 
that believers get there a new inspiration in 
Bible study, a new enthusiasm for Christ as 
their Redeemer, and a new qualification for 
winning souls ! 



262 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 




CHAPTER XX, 

BLISS, THE SINGING EVANGELIST. 

T was said of Beethoven and Mozart, 
that it was the office of one ** to Hft 
mortals up," and of the other " to 
bring angels down." Such is the power 
of that subtile, weird thing which we call 
music. 

Visitors at Rome, Pa., will see in the mod- 
est cemetery a plain marble shaft twenty 
feet high, surmounted by a cap and draped 
urn. It bears a significant inscription: 
" Erected by the Sunday-schools of the 
United States and Great Britain, in response 
to the invitation of D. L. Moody, as a me- 
morial to Philip P. Bliss, author of ' Hold 
the Fort ' and other gospel songs." 

On the reverse side are the names of Mr. 
Bliss and his wife, Mrs. Lucy Young Bliss, 



BLISS. 263 

with the sad record of their tragical death 
by the faUing of the railroad bridge at Ash- 
tabula, Ohio, Dec. 29, 1876. 

Here is the memorial of a man who 
preached the gospel in song. With him the 
service of song in the house of the Lord 
was a service of worship and a means of 
evangelism. God raised him up to show us 
what a spirit could be carried into song, 
and vvliat capacities consecrated song has 
for convicting, converting, sanctifying, and 
educating. 

Yet Mr. Bliss w^as not a sweet singer only ; 
but a poet, composer, and evangelist, as well 
as an ideal Christian gentleman. Dr. Vin- 
cent says : " He was one of the noblest, 
gentlest, holiest, and cheeriest of men." 
The faith that dwelt in him dwelt first in 
his father, whose simple childlike trust in 
God, and w^iose continual communion with 
Jesus, and whose happy frame, always read- 
ing his Bible or singing, were reproduced 
with rare fidelity in his son. If any one 
asks, ''What's in a name?" w^e only point 



264 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

to the name, Philip Paul Bliss. What a 
prophecy that name was of a character that 
combined the simplicity of Philip, the devo- 
tion of Paul, and the uniform bliss of one 
who lived in God ! His joy especially gave 
tone if not tune to his whole life. On one 
occasion late in his life, when just about to 
sing, "■ More joy in His service," he stopped 
and said to Dr. Goodwin : *' I don't think I 
can sing that as * my prayer ' any more. 
It seems as though I had as much joy 
in serving the Blessed Master as I can 
bear." 

Mr. Bliss had in early life few educational 
advantages, and at elev^en years of age left 
home and went to work on a farm. But at 
twelve he made his public confession of 
Christ, though all through childhood he 
gave evidence that he was a child of God. 
Until he was sixteen his energies were given 
to the toil for daily bread. 

In 1855 he spent the winter at school, and 
such was his quickness to learn and improve, 
that the next winter he taught school. 



BLISS. 265 

His passion for music was characteristic of 
him in early hfe. When an awkward, over- 
grown lad of ten years, he passed by a house 
and heard strains of music that so charmed 
him that, barefoot and stranger aS he was, 
he ventured in at the open door, and stood 
entranced but unobserved. It was the first 
time he had ever seen or heard a piano, and 
as the young lady ceased playing, he ex- 
claimed, " O lady, do play some more ! " 
Startled, she turned and said, " Get out of 
here with your great feet ! " little dreaming 
what a beautiful flower her rudeness was 
crushing. 

The winter of 1857 Mr. Bliss passed in 
the singing-school of Mr. J. G. Towner, and 
had there his first systematic training in the 
divine art; he also attended one of Brad- 
bury's musical conventions. His life-work 
was thus providentially, but unconsciously, 
taking shape. The next winter he taught in 
the academy at Rome, Pa., and became an 
inmate of the family of Mr. O. F. Young, 
whose daughter Lucy he married in 1859. 



266 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

He afterward saw that this was the very best 
thing he could have done. Their married 
Hfe was one long concord of sweet sounds, 
unmarred even by those discords of the 
seventh that lead to harmony. They were 
not opposites, but they were apposites : he 
poetic, demonstrative, impulsive, impressi- 
ble ; she practical, reserved, persistent, self- 
controlled. 

The consciousness grew upon Mr. Bliss 
that God had called him to service, and that 
service implied his being used of God to the 
best purpose and in the largest measure. 
He saw that if he had any gift, it was that 
of song; and it grew upon him that to set 
the truth of the gospel to music was a grand 
aim to engross his life. He had, however, 
rare gifts of humor and mimicry; and on one 
occasion, after singing some comical medley 
in a musical institute, some of his fellow- 
musicians urged him to enter the opera field 
as a bouffe singer. It would have been a 
great temptation to him, but for his love to 
Christ. God had a grander work for him. 



BLISS. 267 

and a nobler platform than the stage of the 
theatre. 

The first composition, published in 1864, 
gave no prophecy of his future. It was a 
mere sentimental song tinged with religion. 
The conception of using song as a vehicle 
for gospel truth had not then rooted itself 
in him ; but it was slowly forming, and led 
to the writing of both songs and tunes for 
*' The Prize," etc. In 1869, in Chicago, he 
heard Mr. Moody for the first time. That 
meeting proved pivotal as to his after-life. 
Mr. Moody's attention was drawn to a rather 
fine-looking fellow in his audience in Wood's 
Museum, who sang with great sweetness and 
power, and he managed to get hold of his 
hand before he went out and to get a prom- 
ise from him of more help in the same line ; 
and it was the power of Bliss's solo singing 
that was among the first influences that led 
Moody to magnify gospel songs as a means 
of evangelization. 

In May, 1870, Mr. Bliss and Mr. Whittle 
first met; and they went together to the 



268 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

Winnebago Sunday-school convention, were 
drawn to each other, and for a time their 
famihes Hved in the same house. While Mr. 
Bliss was leading the choir and superintend- 
ing the Sabbath-school in the First Congre- 
gational Church, he developed practically 
his own power to make song helpful to 
worship and preaching. As he stood in the 
choir gallery during rehearsals, he would 
point to the crimson cross in the transept 
window, and say: '* I am glad we have the 
cross always before us. Let us forget every- 
thing else when we sing. Let us seek to 
have the people lose sight of us, of our 
efforts, our skill, and think only of Him." 
The pastor. Dr. Goodwin, soon learned that 
he need have no fear that the anthems and 
voluntaries that such a leader selected would, 
either before or after the sermon, prove a 
hindrance to its power; and when he com- 
mitted to him the closing service, unity of 
impression was always so conserved that the 
effect of the truth was only deepened and 
confirmed. 



BLISS. 269 

The next epoch in Mr. BHss's Hfe was 
approaching. During the winter of 1873-74 
he was urged by Mr. Moody, then in Scot- 
land, to give up all else and devote life to 
the singing of the gospel. While weighing 
this matter, an invitation to Waukegan led 
Mr. Whittle and Mr. Bliss to hold meetings 
of an evangelistic nature there for three 
days. God's spirit was present in power. He 
used Mr. Whittle's and Mr. Cole's plain preach- 
ing and Mr. Bliss's pathetic singing in a very 
manifest way, that could not be mistaken. As 
Mr. Bliss sang " Almost Persuaded," sinners 
rose in all parts of the house, fully persuaded 
to yield to Christ. The next afternoon those 
three men, Mr. Whittle, Mr. Cole, and Mr. Bliss, 
held a consecration meeting; and then and 
there the sweet singer gave up everything to 
the Lord, abandoned his musical conventions 
and secular music, and put himself wholly at 
the Lord's disposal. From that day, Wednes- 
day, March 25, 1874, until that fatal plunge 
at Ashtabula, Dec. 29, 1876, P. P. Bliss knew 
but one aim : to bring souls to Christ by 



270 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

sacred song. How he carried out his pur- 
pose let us consider, for it has a bearing upon 
hundreds of other hves. 

God has in every hfe a plan, which it ought 
to be, and may be, our highest joy to work 
out into finished completeness. Mr. Bliss 
had a distinct divine commission : the re- 
demption of sacred song from prevailing 
perversion. When Darwin Cook heard him 
sing at a wedding anniversary, he felt the 
power of song to impress the gospel, and he 
went to him and told him that such was his 
calling. Moody says: "I believe he was 
raised up of God to write hymns for the church 
of Christ in this age, as Charles Wesley was 
for his day." 

In order to do this, three things were 
necessary, and he studied to secure them 
all, and succeeded : — 

I. The words must be full of the gospel. Ex- 
amine his favorite songs, especially those the 
words of which he composed : how near they 
lie to the very heart of the gospel ! They 
present Christ as a living, loving, personal. 



BLISS. 271 

coming Saviour. They emphasize faith and 
a present salvation. To one who said he 
would " try " to seek the Lord, Mr. Bhss 
spoke up and said, " Spell it T-R-U-S-T." 
And that was the key-note of his singing, as 
in *' Whosoever Will," " 'T is the promise of 
God," etc. 

Mr. Bliss may have written some hymns 
that lack poetic beauty, but they contain no 
morbid sentiment, no sighing for past days 
and over aching voids, like Cowper's Olney 
hymn. They were not studied productions ; 
they were inspirations. Sometimes a melody 
would come to him first, and he would wait 
for words that seemed to fit into its very 
structure. Sometimes the words would come 
first, born of a sudden glimpse of truth, and 
would have to wait for a melody to match 
them. 

2. The music must be fitted to the words, 
and fitted to be the vehicle of the Spirit. 

He and Mr. Whittle spent at the author's 
house four weeks of their stay in Detroit in 
1875. During that time I had rare oppor- 



2/2 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

tunities of knowing him and observing his 
habits. On one occasion I wrote the words 
of the song : '' With harps and with viols," 
to suit a sermon Mr. Whittle was preparing; 
and before he began to compose the music for 
those words, Mr. Bliss withdrew to his room 
for a season of prayer. It was no marvel 
that his songs have been made so conspicu- 
ously the channels for the conveyance of 
spiritual impressions, for not only the words, 
but the music too, were '' sanctified by the 
word of God and by prayer." As George 
Herbert would say, " he dipped his words in 
his own heart" before he sang, and bathed 
them in his own rich experience, and then 
singing was an emotional utterance, a kind of 
language finer and more subtile than human 
dialects, in which to express the highest 
truths and deepest feelings. 

3. The words must be clearly enunciated, 
even in singing. 

Mr. Finney was himself a fine singer, and 
had been a choir leader. But he had no pa- 
tience with the modern "mouthing of words" 



BLISS. 273 

and "murdering of English" in choir sing- 
ing. One Sunday morning, after an anthem 
in which the words had been successfully 
smothered in vocalization, he rose to pray, 
and quaintly gave thanks to the Omniscient 
One that He could "understand the anthem," 
while confessing that it was " impossible 
for the audience to catch one intelligible 
word." 

Who, that ever heard Mr. Bliss sing, lost the 
words? What superb enunciation, emphasis, 
and musical pronunciation, and — shall we call 
it? — elocution! How he sang those words, 
" When Jesus comes," and with increasing 
volume brought out that Hne of the chorus, 

''All Glory, GRAND, ETERNAL!" 
So he rendered in a masterly manner, 

Man of sorrows,' what a name ! " 



(( < 



at first so soft as scarcely to be audible, yet 
every word clearly cut, and by a gradual 
crescendo mounting up to the grand height 
of that last line, 
"Hallelujah! WHAT A SAVIOUR!" 



274 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

Such singing is the loftiest flight of vocal ut- 
terance, and, like the most tremendous bursts 
of oratory and eloquence, lifts and bears an 
audience as on giant wings. It reminds us of 
what Gladstone characterizes as the supreme 
influence of the speaker, — the power of "■ re- 
ceiving from his audience in a vapor what 
he pours back on them in a flood." Such 
singing is eloquent; it evokes the sympathy 
and stirs the emotion of an audience, and 
these increase thus the very power by which 
they were called forth. 

Philosophize as we may, the fact is, as 
attested in hundreds of instances individu- 
ally known, his singing was conspicuously 
used to convert souls. Mr. W. O. Lattimore 
has confessed that when, given up to the wild- 
est debauchery, he seemed drifting rapidly to 
a drunkard's death and a hopeless hell, he 
somehow got into the Tabernacle at Chicago, 
and heard that song written by Mr. Bliss, 
** What shall the harvest be." The words and 
music roused him even from his drowsy stu- 
por, and he listened : — 



BLISS. 275 

" Sowing the seed of a li7igering pain ! 
Sowing the seed of a maddened brain ! 
Sowing the seed of A tarnished name ! 
Sowing the seed of eternal shame! 
OH, WHAT SHALL THE HARVEST BE?" 

and every line seemed to be armed with a 
heavier and sharper dart, and to come deeper 
into his soul. He rushed from the Taberna- 
cle to the intoxicating cup and the gaming- 
table, into solitude and into society, but the 
song rang like a clarion in his ears ; and 
in letters of fire everywhere appeared the 
question, '* What shall the harvest be ? " 
until he found peace where only it can be 
found. 

We beheve Mr. Bliss was raised up of God 
to become in himself a living protest against 
corruptions in the service of song, such as 
idolatry of art, singing in a dead language, 
praising by proxy, lack of gospel quality, and 
perversion to self-display. He had a royal 
nature, and in the line of song especially 
transcendent gifts. But they were all the 
Lord's. This was his alabaster box of pre- 
cious ointment, but he broke it upon his 



2']6 EVANGELISTIC WORK, 

Lord's blessed feet, and the house was filled 
with the odor of the ointment. 

How pathetic that unconscious prophecy 
of his departure ! He wrote, with regard to 
that last journey: "Have planned to leave 
the boys here at Rome with grandma and 
Aunt Clara this winter, so that wife can go 
with me ! " Just before the train crashed 
through the bridge, he was seen writing a 
hymn or tune. They went together. 



McALL. 277 




CHAPTER XXI. 

McALL, THE EVANGELIST OF THE FRENCH. 

OVE is Omnipotence : and therefore 
God is Love. Before it, even the 
barriers of a strange language melt 
away, and the iron doors of distrust and 
hatred open as of their own accord. 

In the summer of 1 87 1 Rev. Robert W. 
McAll and his wife were visiting Paris, then 
still comparatively desolate and deserted, at 
the close of the terrible war with Germany. 
Moved by a deep desire to reach the poor, 
priest-ridden workingmen with the gospel, 
he and his wife were giving away tracts in 
the hotels and on the public streets in the 
evening hours of an August day, when a 
workingman said : " If any one \n\\\ come 
among us and teach us, not a gospel of 
priestcraft and superstition, but of truth 
and liberty, many of us are ready to hear." 



2/8 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

Mr. McAU returned home; but above the 
murmur of the waves and the hum of busy 
hfe, he heard the voice of that workingman : 
" If any one will come and teach us ... we 
are ready to hear." He said to himself, " Is 
this God's call? Shall I go?" His friends 
said, "No !" But a voice within said, "Yes." 
And he left his English home and parish 
and went back, — back to Belleville, whence 
in days of anarchy and violence issued forth 
the desperate mobs to burn and destroy and 
kill. There, in January, 1872, in the Rue 
Julien La Croix, he opened one little hall, 
in a faubourg of one hundred thousand des- 
perate, lawless communists; one man con- 
ducting a gospel meeting to save millions ! 
He had nothing in his hands for defence, in 
the midst of men known as assassins, but a 
pocket-Bible, — his " double-barrel revolver." 
And in a district worse to work in than St. 
Giles in London he began to tell the old 
story of Jesus. And very soon the httle 
place was crowded, and a larger room be- 
came a necessity; and so it spread until 



McALL. 279 

fifteen years later that one gospel hall has 
become one Junidi'ed and thirty, in which in 
one year have been held fourteen thousand 
religious meetings, with a million hearers, 
and four thousand services for children, with 
two hundred thousand attendants. No such 
history is to be found elsewhere, and no sta- 
tistics can adequately represent the results 
of a work so apostolic in principle and 
pattern. 

These many services are simply ** recruit- 
ing offices " to secure new volunteers for 
the Lord's army ; no new sect or church is 
formed, but converts are gathered and then 
fall into the neighboring churches. But the 
work is only at its beginning. The cry 
comes from all parts of France for new sta- 
tions ; and the work needs only more mejt 
and more means to be indefinitely multiplied. 

The McAll Mission is one of the most 
remarkable movements of Providence in 
modern times. At the critical hour of the 
history of France, God raised up the right 
man for the place and the work : as Sydney 



28o EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

Smith would say, the round peg found the 
round hole. 

It was in the very period of transition 
when, breaking with Romanism, and the 
clericalism which Gambetta declared to be 
the foe of France, the nation was left with- 
out a religion, and in danger of drifting into 
infidelity and atheism. Mr. McAll, obedient 
to the call of God, fell almost unconsciously 
into his place in the plan of God, and intro- 
duced a mode of worship without a vestige 
of superstition or a relic of empty formalism 
and hollow ceremonial. Doubtless he was 
building more wisely than he knew; but He 
who called him to the work had prepared 
the material for the structure, and guided its 
erection. 

Certain principles underlie the work of the 
McxA-ll Mission in Paris and other French cities, 
and contribute to its phenomenal success. 

I. The Gospd for the Masses. —The leader 
of the movement and his fellow-helpers are 
moved with compassion for the multitudes 
that have really no true knowledge of Christ, 



McALL. 281 

that faint for spiritual food and are scattered 
abroad as sheep having no shepherd. They 
have confidence in the adaptation of the 
gospel to every need of every human soul, 
in the accessibility of the common people, 
and in the susceptibility even of the crimi- 
nal classes to the approach of unselfish 
disciples. 

2. The Pozver of Passion for Souls. — 
Twenty years ago the thought of finding 
in this priest-ridden people, ignorant, super- 
stitious, hardened, and half-atheistic, such 
readiness to receive the Protestant gospel, 
would have seemed wildly chimerical. But 
simple love for their souls, unmixed with 
any self-advantage, has been the moving 
spring of all this work, and it has proved 
resistless. When Mr. McAll began his work 
in Belleville he could not speak French, but 
he could utter two sentences in the tongue 
of those workingmen : one was, " God loves 
you ; " and the other, " I love you ; " and 
upon those two, as pillars, the whole arch 
rests. 



282 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

3. The Attraction of a Free Gospel. — From 
the first free distribution of tracts on the 
streets of Paris, until the work reached its 
present grand dimensions, nothing has at 
once surprised and drawn the workingmen 
more than this, that for all this ministry to 
their good, they have not been asked a cen- 
time ! The feast has been spread on a hun- 
dred tables without money and without 
price. They have been wont to associate 
all that is called religion with a tax, heavy 
and oppressive. The priests have fattened 
on the money paid for masses for the dead ; 
and cathedral churches have been reared out 
of poor men's scanty wages. But all this 
is an unselfish labor, for which no return is 
asked. 

4. The Simplicity of true Gospel Work. — 
These methods are unchurchly, — at the far- 
thest remove from ritualistic formalism and 
ecclesiastical ceremony. Any place of meet- 
ing is good enough where the people can be 
comfortably gathered. A Bible, a simple 
stand, a small reed-organ, a few hundred 



McALL. 283 

chairs, a plain, earnest address, singing, 
prayer, hand-to-hand contact, — this is all the 
machinery of the greatest mission movement 
of modern times ! A bare hand reached out 
to the poor workingman, through which may 
be felt the warm throb of a loving heart, 
with not even a kid glove between to act as a 
non-conductor, — that is the secret of power. 

5. The Exemplification of true Ch'istian 
Unity. — The effort is both unsectarian and 
undenominational. No lines of division ap- 
pear between workers, and no " tribal stand- 
ards " are unfurled. Christ's is the only 
name known. They are "all one," and hence 
** the world believes." The energies often 
expended in contests and conflicts, or at 
least rivalries and jealousies among disciples, 
are here all turned into the channel of pure 
evangehstic work. 

6. The Moral Education of the Common 
People. — Mr. McAU saw in Belleville extreme 
poverty and misery side by side with mental 
and moral degradation. He felt that both 
the material and spiritual conditions of the 



284 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

people must be remedied together, and that 
the gospel was the lever to raise the whole 
man to a higher plane. Hence the promi- 
nence given from the first to schools and 
class instruction. He went everywhere, 
preaching and teaching; informing the in- 
tellect and elevating the humanity of those 
whose souls he sought to save. 

And the work has been successful along 
all these lines, and the more successful be- 
cause projected along all these lines. The 
hand of the venerated and lamented pastor, 
George Fisch, was not the only one stretched 
out in recognition and encouragement. In 
1877 the '* Societe Nationale d'Encourage- 
ment au Bien " presented McAU with a silver 
medal, for his devotion to Jrjnianity. And 
the following year the " Societe Libre d'ln- 
struction et d'Education " presented him a 
medal for services rendered to popular in- 
struction. These public acknowledgments 
of McAU's work as a philanthropist and edu- 
cator were entirely aside from all questions 
of religion ; while the Government recognized 



McALL. 285 

that same work as the best security for order 
and good citizenship, offering him every aid 
in the planting of new gospel stations, as the 
best " police measure" for the prevention of 
disorder and crime. 

The McAll Mission work inspired in the 
Huguenot churches — the " Waldenses " of 
France — an aggressive evangelism. Their 
life had been repressed ; the law had pro- 
hibited all such aggressive work, as "prose- 
lyting." They saw this humble man come 
to Paris, and remove the barriers between 
the *' unchurched and churched " and come 
close to the people ; they saw him gathering 
the multitudes into his "halls," making those 
halls not only nurseries of piety but grand 
training schools for future evangelism ; meet- 
ing papacy and infidelity not controversially 
and negatively, but experimentally and posi- 
tively. And here, where they had thought 
there was no field for evangelization, a for- 
eigner had built up the most wonderful 
mission in Europe, and proved papal France 
to be the foremost missionary field of the 



286 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

world. The Protestant French churches 
began to ask whether France could not and 
ought not and must not evangelize France; 
and so they have become the missionaries of 
this new era, and in their poverty need only 
inoney to thrust in the sickle and reap these 
white harvests. 

And so among this mercurial people, whose 
very blood is quicksilver, God is carrying on 
a work whose depth and reality are beyond 
all question. France has had a fickle but 
never a torpid national life, — "like a maniac 
at times, but never like a corpse." But the 
gospel is God's remedy both for infidelity 
and instability ; and so far and so fast as the 
gospel permeates the French nationality, 
every noble characteristic develops. Dr. 
A. F. Beard, who has the most discrimi- 
nating view of the whole situation, pronounces 
France, of all lands, the '' most hopeful and 
strategic." 

McAll has put in motion a host of agen- 
cies, all evangehstic. Mission stations, with 
schools, classes, mothers' meetings, prayer- 



McALL. 287 

meetings, evangelists, visitors, tract-distribu- 
tors, — everything thoroughly Evangelical, 
variations of one key-note, — *' Christ cruci- 
fied." The labors are great, of providing 
speakers for so many meetings, and with no 
free day but Saturday. The appliances are 
very comprehensive and complete, avoiding 
only open-air preaching, which conflicts with 
municipal law. The methods are very sim- 
ple ; no expensive buildings or outlay, — a 
clean, whitewashed wine-shop or commodi- 
ous room, adorned with texts and provided 
with platform and seats. And, withal, no 
mission anywhere is more economically, 
honestly, and conscientiously conducted and 
administered. Every centime is accounted 
for in detail. 



288 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

McAULEY, THE EVANGELIST OF THE 
OUTCAST. 



m 



INZENDORF, when a lad at Halle, 
founded the now famous Senfkorn 
Orden, — the ''Order of the Grain 
of Mustard-Seed." Its simple principle was 
that every member of it should seek daily 
the conversion of some other soul. That 
" order " Hes at the basis of the Moravian 
Church, the leader of God's missionary 
host. 

Jerry McAuley and the '* Water Street " 
and *' Cremorne " Missions have become 
synonymes of self-sacrificing work for the 
salvation of the abandoned and outcast 
classes in our cities ; and this is simply an- 
other "■ order of the mustard-seed," — a con- 
verted criminal seeking to save others like 



McAULEY. 289 

himself by declaring what God had done 
for his soul. 

The conversion of this notorious river- 
thief, whose heart was a cage for all unclean 
birds, and whose lawlessness made him the 
terror even of the police, is one of the 
modern miracles. It was while in prison, 
serving out his sentence, that on a Sunday 
morning he saw on the chapel platform one 
of his old confederates in crime, known as 
'* Awful Gardner." During McAuley's im- 
prisonment, Orville Gardner had found deliv- 
erance from the chains of sin, and burning 
to open prison doors to those who were still 
bound, he had come that morning to tell the 
story of redemption. 

He addressed the convicts as one who had 
but a little before worn that same dress, but 
who had found in Jesus a white robe to cover 
all his sin and crime. The voice choked with 
emotion, and the tears raining down his face, 
bore witness that with intense feeling and 
earnestness he was speaking. Then as he 
knelt and prayed, the sobs of those guilty 
19 



290 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

men echoed his own, and even Jerry Mc- 
Auley was forced to hide the tears he was 
ashamed to have seen. 

McAuley knew that Gardner was no hypo- 
crite ; and as he heard that tongue so long 
familiar with oaths and obscenities, curses 
and blasphemies, tenderly talking in that 
new and heavenly dialect, he sat in rapt 
astonishment. It was all a strange language 
to him ; but the man's transformation was a 
notable miracle, and he could not deny it. 
Little as he could understand the message 
of grace, one verse quoted by Gardner stuck 
in his memory; and on his return to his 
cell, he took down the prison Bible which 
he had thrust into the ventilator, brushed 
away the dust and cobwebs, and began to 
read. 

A lady visitor to the prison read and 
prayed with him, and helped him to pray 
for himself. His increasing unrest and de- 
sire for pardon at last drove away sleep. 
He flung himself on the stone floor in an 
agony of despair, and wept and prayed, 



McAULEY. 291 

resolved not to rest until his load was lifted. 
In a vision of the night a gentle hand seemed 
laid on his head, and a tender voice said, 
*' Thy sins, which are many, are forgiven." 
He always believed this a real visitation from 
God in answer to prayer. He rose from the 
floor, and another jail, like that of Philippi, 
rang wath ** songs in the night," and ** the 
prisoners heard." 

The guard, astonished, opening the door, 
found Jerry shouting, clapping hands, and 
leaping in an ecstasy of delight, and threat- 
ened to report him for disorder. Disorder ! 
Yes, it was the disorder of the sepulchre when 
the dead hears the voice of the Son of God 
and comes forth, shaking off his grave-clothes. 
From that hour Jerry McAuley was a new 
man. 

When prison doors shut behind him, he 
felt an irresistible desire at once to redeem 
his own past and save his old companions ; 
and though he fell again into evil company 
and evil habits, the Lord had His hold upon 
him, and he was at last developed into an 



292 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

earnest and stable disciple, and learned that 
his only safety was in entire abandonment 
of all evil and in positive consecration to 
work for souls. No man knows a fidl 
salvation until he gets to this same fork \ 
in the road, and deliberately takes the way 
of self-denial for Christ and service for 
souls. 

But what work should he, could he, do? 
Born of a counterfeiter, he had no schooling 
but in vice and crime, and had only learned 
to read and write while in prison. He had 
neither money nor social standing; neither 
learning nor eloquence ; neither a good name 
nor even a knowledge of the Scriptures. 
But one thing was sure : the very life he 
had led fitted him to reach eriminals and 
otitcasts like himself. He knew them, and 
they knew him. If he could make them 
believe that he was a converted man, and 
sincere in his desire to do them good, he 
might get a hold upon them that other 
men could not. To his hearty surren- 
der to this convietion, zve may trace a 



McA ULE V. 293 

career of usefnhiess that even angels migJit 
envy. 

He went back to his old haunts of crime, 
and began to work, without waiting for 
further preparations, appHances, or encour- 
agements. In October, 1872, the Water 
Street Mission took shape as an institution, 
and Jerry and Maria McAuley began there 
the ten years' work whose grand results we 
shall never measure till the ** Books " are 
opened. Night after night, week after week, 
year after year, they labored in their humble 
way, seeking and saving the lost. They fed 
the hungry, sheltered the outcast, trusted the 
most untrustworthy, and taught the most 
ignorant; and by simple patience and love 
constrained the worst men and women to 
newness of life. 

There was open to them " a door great 
and effectual, and there were many adversa- 
ries." But Jerry McAuley and his brave 
wife were not easily intimidated. If any one 
came to his meetings with a persistent pur- 
pose to interrupt them, Jerry did not hesitate 



294 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

to put him out; and more than one gigantic 
ruffian has proved a coward when, in the 
name of the Lord whom he served, Jerry 
laid hands upon him. With undaunted per- 
severance, that triumphed over all obstacles, 
the work was carried on, and a night rarely 
passed without some marked case of con- 
version. 

The means used were of the most unpre- 
tending sort. A plain but tolerably com- 
modious room, seated with benches ; singing, 
praying, simple reading of the Word of God 
with such explanation as a man taught of 
God could add, and the testimony of per- 
sonal experience, together with hand-to- 
hand contact with the lost, — these were all 
Jerry McAuley's '' secrets." But God used 
just such humble people and methods to 
work wonders of grace. 

When Saint Theresa began to build her 
hospital, she had, as her whole capital, three 
halfpence. But she said : ''Theresa and three 
halfpence are nothing; but God and three 
halfpence are incalculable." All successful 



McAULEY. 295 

work for Christ and souls is an illustra- 
tion of the old adage: "One with God is a 
majority." 

When, after seven and a half years at Sing 
Sing, Jerry McAuley came out of prison, 
with blighted life and reputation, no one 
could have thought that God would use a 
man so foolish, weak, base, despised, — a mere 
nonentity in human eyes, — to do a service so 
great, and among a class so low, that the 
wise and mighty were unequal to it. But so 
it was. His very humility, incompetency, 
conscious unworthiness, ignorance, weakness, 
drove him to the only Source of power. He 
gave himself up to God to be filled and to 
be used. And while others waited, and won- 
dered who should work for the outcasts and 
the abandoned, Jerry McAuley went to work 
and saved them. 

No man was so vile or so vicious that 
Jerry McAuley despaired of him. ** Rowdy 
Brown" was one of the roughs, — a large, 
strong, bold fellow, who united the brutality 
of a savage with the ferocity of a wild beast. 



296 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

Passing a man who was seated on the fore- 
castle of a Liverpool packet, quietly reading 
his Bible, Brown, in pure malice, kicked him 
so violently in the mouth as to knock out 
his teeth; and this ruffian had killed men 
while in California. Hearing of the conver- 
sion of one of his sailor-mates at the Water 
Street Mission, he swore that he would go 
down there ; and if that fellow should get 
up to talk, he would force open his jaws 
and empty a bottle of whiskey down his 
throat. 

He went with his bottle. But there was a 
Power there on whose resistance to his devil- 
ish plot he had not counted. While waiting 
for his time to come, he became strangely 
moved himself; a new sensation, a violent 
trembling, overmastered him. He could not 
even flee ; the crowd was too dense, and his 
strength was gone. By the time his old chum 
was giving his testimony, Rowdy Brown was 
ready to faint ; and when at the close of the 
testimonies, inquirers were invited to come 
forward, he startled the whole company by 



McAULEY. 297 

dropping on his knees and crying, " Pray 
for me ! " 

The excitement was intense. He yelled 
and groaned for mercy, while his awakened 
conscience rocked and racked even his huge 
frame. Two nights of tempest passed before 
he heard the Voice that speaks the soul into 
calm. But when he did get peace, he leaped 
from bed at midnight and roused the whole 
house with his shouts of praise. Rowdy 
Brown no sooner found Christ than he 
found work for Christ. In his intense pas- 
sion to save men he would actually pick up 
bodily and carry some sailor to the Mission, 
and set down the astonished man on the 
anxious seat, and then plead and pray with 
him till the heat of his own ardor and fervor 
melted him into submission to Christ. His 
old companions could not credit his conver- 
sion as a reality. A captain whom he had 
cruelly beaten scouted the idea, and ex- 
claimed : " Brown is a devil ; he can't be 
converted ! " Yet even at that moment that 
same Rowdy Brown was preparing for a 



298 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

meeting on board a West India brig, stretch- 
ing a canvas for an awning and putting up 
his crude sign, and running boats to and fro 
to bring sailors on board who were wilHng to 
attend a " Jerry McAuley prayer-meeting." 

This is only one representative instance of 
the far-reaching results of Jerry McAuley's 
evangelistic work. A year or two before his 
death he was led to resign the Water Street 
Mission to other hands, and gave himself to 
the new Cremorne Mission, at the corner 
of Thirty-second Street and Sixth Avenue. 
Here was another gateway of hell, sur- 
rounded by houses of ill-fame ; but here, 
in that very room where vice and crime had 
held revel, God's grace repeated, and still re- 
peats, night after night the wonders wrought 
in the Water Street Mission. 

The whole work of Jerry McAuley shows 
the power of God's Spirit through personal 
testimony. Here was no marked ability of 
any sort. A man, born of criminals and bred 
to crime ; an ex-convict and outcast, ignorant 
and inadequate in himself to any great work ; 



McAULEY. 299 

nay, bearing about side by side with the 
" marks of the Lord Jesus " the marks of his 
old Hfe, — simply delivered one great gospel 
message, backed up by his personal testi- 
mony : " This is a faithful saying, and worthy 
of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into 
the world to save sinners ; of whom I am 
chief. Howbeit for this cause I obtained 
mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might 
show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to 
them which should hereafter believe on Him 
to life everlasting." These personal testimo- 
nies from himself and other converts were 
the special attraction of these meetings, and 
in them was the hiding of their power. Such 
witness of the lips, confirmed by the life, in- 
spired hope even in the most desperate and 
despairing sinners ; it proved that " He is 
able to save them to the uttermost that come 
unto God by Him." 

On September 21, 1884, at the Broadway 
Tabernacle in New York City, there was such 
a gathering as that metropolis has never 
known before or since. The building was 



300 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

thronged, and even the street blocked, by a 
crowd that was a strange mixture of mer- 
chants and ministers, lawyers and bankers, 
roughs and rowdies, women of fashion and 
women of the town. It was the funeral of 
Jerry McAuley; and all ranks and classes 
were there to lay their tributes side by side 
upon his coffin, and shed their tears together 
over the dust of the man who had done more 
than all the churches of that city to rescue 
the perishing from a life of sin and shame, 
and who went within the very gates of hell 
to pluck brands out of the burning. After 
the services were closed, for four hours the 
procession moved by that open coffin; and 
redeemed convicts and the noblemen of the 
land alike burst into tears as they looked for 
the last time on that pale face which ladies 
of quality, and women who had been sinners, 
alike kissed with grateful love. 

** God buries the workers, but He carries 
on the work," is the inscription on the 
memorial tablet of the Wesleys in Eng- 
land's Abbey. The Water Street Mission, 



McAULEY. 301 

now in other hands, has lately been adorned 
with a marble tablet, which bears this in- 
scription : — 

In Loving Memory of 

JERRY McAULEY, 

The Founder of this mission. 

He rests from his labors, 

And his works do follow him. 

Where I am there shall also my servant be. 

John xii. 26. 



302 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 




CHAPTER XXIII. 

AN EXAMPLE OF EVANGELISM. 

HANDFUL of seed may sometimes 
be traced to the great harvest with 
its garner full. One instance will be 
given to show how feasible it is in any field 
to begin evangelistic work, and how rapid 
and remarkable may be the results. 

On a winter afternoon, in February, 1858, 
a young man of Philadelphia, whose name 
is now known wherever the English tongue 
is spoken,^ went with a missionary of the 
American Sunday-School Union ^ to a second- 
story back-room of a humble house on Pine 
Street, near Twenty-third, to begin a mission 
Sunday-school in a very destitute and un- 
promising quarter. The few children who 
gathered, with those who had called them 

1 Mr. John Wanamaker. 2 Mr. E. H. Toland, 



AN EXAMPLE OF EVANGELISM. 303 

together, were compelled to beat a hasty 
retreat before the rowdies and roughs, known 
as ** Killers " and " Bouncers," whose clubs 
were the terror of the neighborhood. 

But a strong desire to teach these poor 
neglected little ones had taken possession of 
this young man of twenty-one ; and that same 
afternoon another room was found on South 
Street, where on the next Lord's day a Sun- 
day-school was begun, — afterwards known as 
the Bethany Mission, — with twenty-seven 
children, and two women, with the two men 
aforementioned, as teachers. The accom- 
modations were so poor that the only 
benches were those extemporized out of old 
boards and bricks; and the neighborhood 
so unattractive that but one house relieved 
the long stretch of brick-yards, clay-pits, and 
ash-heaps between South Street and the 
Baltimore Railroad, half a mile below, — this 
deserted district being the territory of the 
terrible " Schuylkill Rangers." 

The rapid increase of children compelled 
the renting of a room adjoining, and still a 



304 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

third, downstairs, while the staircase itself 
was crowded. July came, and a proposal was 
made to erect a tent to relieve the pressure 
for room, as no larger building could be had. 
And, after prayer for guidance, the superin- 
tendent and his bigger boys of the school 
levelled off the ash-lot on South Street, where 
the tent was put up, made of old ship sails, 
which an old man interested in the work had 
himself begged at the wharves. 

That Monday morning when these *' tent- 
makers " met on the ground to put up their 
rude canopy was a time of excitement. It 
was a Catholic neighborhood, and there were 
threats that the tent should not be put up, 
or, if so, should be burned or torn down. 
But instead of carrying out these threats, 
many of these people actually came to be 
numbered with those who supported the work 
with their money and guarded it with their 
prayers. The tent enclosed seats for some 
four hundred persons; and when the side- 
curtains were raised, more than as many more 
could be accommodated on the lot outside. 



AN EXAMPLE OF EVANGELISM. 305 

The Sunday-school at once grew from one 
hundred to three hundred ; and on the first 
night of the completed tent, before the first 
Sabbath service was held, a woman there 
gave her heart to God who is still a teacher 
in Bethany school. That first convert was 
God's seal on the work, and was both seed 
and sign of the coming harvest. The increas- 
ing interest forbade that the work should be 
limited to the summer season, and so friends 
rallied to help buy a lot and build a house ; 
and in January, 1859, the Sunday-school 
moved into a new brick building close by 
on South Street, having multiplied tenfold 
within its first year. 

From the first Sunday in the tent, not only 
prayer-meetings but preaching services were 
a part of the work; and in September, 1865, 
a church of twenty members was organized 
and a pastor installed. Soon even this new 
building became too strait and was crowded 
almost to suffocation. God was compelling 
these humble workers to do a greater service 
for the souls about them than they had ever 



306 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

imagined. In faith they followed His moving 
pillar, and He made the way plain. A large 
lot was bought, and in February, 1868, — ten 
years after the inception of the enterprise, — 
a large Sunday-school hall was erected and 
dedicated. It was both elegant and commo- 
dious, but its acoustic properties were so 
faulty that few could be heard who spoke 
from its platform ; and the superintendent, 
who was already a prosperous business man, 
offered at his own expense to tear down and 
reconstruct the building, which was done at 
a cost of fifty thousand dollars. But the 
grand result is a model Sunday-school hall, 
capable of seating over three thousand, and 
where every word from the platform may be 
heard in every part. 

Side by side with this structure, in 1874, 
stood also the completed church-building; 
together these two structures cover nearly 
thirty thousand square feet, and provide ac- 
commodations for five thousand. As we look 
back now over these thirty years since the 
first Sunday-school was held, the expenditure 



AJV EXAMPLE OF EVANGELISM. 307 

upon the buildings, the support of the work, 
and the various benevolences in connection 
with it, reaches a total of not less than half a 
million of dollars ! What a sum for a few, fee- 
ble folk to gather, with scarce three persons 
among them representing wealth ! 

The bulk of that church -membership, 
though in numbers the fifth largest in the 
denomination, is even yet from the working- 
classes. Only the Book of Remembrance of 
the Lord Himself could reveal the sacred 
self-sacrifice by which the work has been 
carried to its present stage. On the central 
tower of the Sunday-school hall is a signifi- 
cant inscription: *'A little child shall lead 
them." It is the memorial of little Ella 
Hurst, a child of the infant school, who, in 
her desire to do something for the new build- 
ing, actually went into the streets and gath- 
ered buckets of bo7ies, and sold them. The 
little gold dollar that she thus earned and 
brought to the building-fund became the 
nucleus of many other gifts. The story of 
her self-sacrifice became known, and from 



308 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

the influence of that one poor Httle child 
came all the money that was turned into 
stone and grew toward heaven in that sym- 
metrical bell-tower. 

But this was only one of the instances of 
self-denial, most of which have no written 
history, by which these great buildings 
have been raised. There were scholars and 
teachers, parents and children, who wrought 
some product of brain or brawn ; who gave 
up a new dress or coat or bonnet; who sold 
rings and breastpins and trinkets; who gave 
money that had been laid aside for a watch 
or a book or some coveted pleasure ; or who 
even went without a meal, now and then, in 
order to get means to give. The story of how 
those structures went up would read like a 
romance. They are love and labor, tears and 
prayers, crystallized into architectural forms. 

But who shall write the exhaustive annals 
of the thirty years since that Sunday-school 
began on that wintry morning in 1858; those 
more than two tJionsand sessions, with as 
many persons who have served as teachers 



A A' EXAMPLE OF EVANGELISM. 309 

and officers, and ten times as many who have 
been connected in some way with the school ; 
the tracts and printed pages distributed by 
the million ; the more than five thousand 
Bibles and twenty thousand hymn-books 
sold ; and better than all, the thousands who 
from this school have been graduated into 
the wide world and scattered in every part 
of the world-field, or who are now shining 
among the stars? 

From the very inception of this enterprise 
a twenty minutes' prayer-meeting has been 
held uniformly at the close of the Sunday- 
school session, and visitors present at the 
school are invited to remain and participate. 
At times as many as fourteen nations have 
been represented in those who have taken 
part in one of these after-meetings, and who 
have gone to their distant homes to bear the 
inspiration of this school, like a live coal to 
kindle fires on other altars. 

The direct and indirect influence of this 
evangelistic church and school no pen can 
record, for no arithmetic can compute it. 



310 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

That whole section of the city is transformed. 
The drinking saloon and filthy hovel have 
given way to great blocks of neat and eco- 
nomical homes for the workingman ; there 
are sobriety, order, thrift, piety, where once 
drunkenness, anarchy, idleness, and crime 
abode. That school and church have made 
police-stations and lock-ups needless, and 
introduced all the blessings of a Christian 
civilization to redeem poverty and misery. 

The motto of this enterprise has from the 
beginning been growth ; first, by strengthen- 
ing and educating disciples, and secondly, 
by reaching out and gathering in outsiders. 
Hence every effort has been made to make the 
church and school a model Christian home, 
attracting to its bosom, and then nourishing 
and cherishing those whom it attracted. A 
weekly teachers' meeting and adult Bible-class 
is taught by the pastor ; weekly prayer-meet- 
ings are regularly held for the congregation 
at large, and for the elder ladies, the young 
ladies, and the young people, particularly. 
An Industrial Collcire meets twice a week 



AjV example of evangelism. 311 

from October to June, for instruction in secu- 
lar and religious departments, at a nominal 
rate, and is attended by hundreds of students. 

Organizations of various kinds within the 
church offer abundant spheres for every 
willing worker to help according to the meas- 
ure of ability and opportunity. A church 
council, composed of elders, deacons, and 
trustees, to consider all matters pertaining to 
the conduct of the church and school ; foreign 
missionary, Dorcas, and aid societies ; door 
men's and youths' associations, busy bees, 
white ribbon temperance army, and converts' 
classes, — these are a few of the many forms 
of organization for mutual help and common 
work. 

The work of the Evangelist Band, how- 
ever, falls particularly within the scope of 
this chapter, and furnishes a very significant 
example of what God is willing to do with a 
few consecrated young men. In February, 
1884, some twenty young men had solemnly 
covenanted with each other to hold themselves 
ready promptly to take up any Christian work, 



312 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

especially among the unsaved.^ From the 
beginning, an abundant and conspicuous 
blessing has rested upon this organization. 
These young men, and others who have 
joined them, have come to be leaders in 
evangelistic work, conducting cottage prayer- 
meetings, mission Sunday-schools, out-door 
services, etc. 

One example of their evangelism may be 
mentioned. Under the lead of the associate 
pastor,^ early in the summer of 1885 a gos- 
pel tent was erected in the southwest part of 
the city. The main part of the work was 
done and the expense borne by these young 
men themselves. They obtained the privi- 
lege of using a vacant lot, dug post-holes 
with their own hands, — their pastor leading 
the way in the hardest of the work, — then 
built a high rough board-fence, enclosing the 
lot. Then they put up a rude framework of 
joists and timbers, and stretching over it a 
canvas covering made of old sail-cloth, built 
a rude platform and benches, and there 

1 Appendix B. 2 Rgv. Thomas C Hoiton. 



AN EXAMPLE OF EVANGELISM. 313 

began to hold a Sunday-school and preach- 
ing service, with weekly meetings. So great 
w^as the interest awakened that when the 
autumn came they determined to enclose 
the open sides with boards and put in large 
stoves, and so keep the services going through 
the cold weather. The result is that the work 
has been maintained until the present date, 
with no interruption, and has been constantly 
fruitful in conversions even among the lowest 
and outcast classes. 

Though the writer is honored with the 
privilege of association with this church as 
one of its pastors, he feels that there is no 
immodesty or indelicacy in giving this testi- 
mony, since his own connection with this 
enterprise has been too recent^ materially 
to affect its character. In nearly every re- 
spect, the work here chronicled was already 
in progress before the present pastorate 
began. But he is quite willing to suffer the 
reproach of a seeming breach of good taste 
if he may prove to an apathetic and sluggish 

1 Beginning July, 1883. 



314 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

Christendom that a few young men, with no 
pretence to either learning or culture, wealth 
or influence, may, by simply undertaking to 
work in the simplest way for souls, turn a 
vacant lot into a sanctuary, and make a rude 
tent for years, through summer and winter 
alike, a birthplace for souls ! 

Gottschalk, on a visit to Spain, learned of a 
poor dying girl who asked but one privilege 
before she breathed her last, — " to hear him 
make his piano talk." His generous nature 
responded ; and he had his favorite instrument 
carried at his own cost to her apartment, and 
there for hours soothed her sufferings by his 
master melodies and harmonies. So deep 
was her enjoyment, that while he was play- 
ing plaintively she quietly passed away. 
What might not we accomplish, if we had 
such passion for souls as would lead us to 
bear to the huts of the poor and the bedsides 
of the dying, without money or price, that 
blessed gospel which is vocal with the music 
of heaven ! 



A WORD OF WITNESS. 315 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

A WORD OF WITNESS. 




ERILY I say unto you : If ye have 
faith as a grain of mustard-seed, 
ye shall say unto this mountain, 
Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall 
remove ; and nothing shall be impossible 
unto you."^ 

This is one of the great, deep lessons 
taught by our Lord. The difference be- 
tween the minute mustard-seed and the 
mountain is not, however, one of qtiantity 
only, but of quality also. The seed may be 
little, but it is the hiding of that great force 
of nature which we call vegetable life. The 
mountain is but a dead, inert mass of matter, 
incapable of motion or growth. The seed 
has the secret of life and, with it, of growth, 

1 Matt. xvii. 20. 



3l6 EVANGELISTIC WORK, 

and, by growth or expansion, can lift and 
heave huge masses of dead matter. 

So of the prayer which is the hiding of 
faith, and so of power to prevail with God. 
The prayer may be insignificant in human 
eyes, and the faith, even in the eyes of the 
praying soul, so small as to seem nothing; 
but it is the seed of God, and hides the life 
of God ; and in contrast to that vital principle 
all external obstacles are only like dead 
masses of matter, to be removed by the fiat 
of faith, which Coleridge says is 

" An afifirmation and an act, 
That bids eternal truth be fact." 

Even where obstacles are overcome in the 
mind and heart of a minister of Christ, or a 
servant of God, he often finds obstacles in 
his environment which he seems powerless 
to remove or surmount. He feels himself 
hemmed in by massive walls or pressed 
down by heavy weights, and knows not what 
to do. 

For example, here is a man of God who 
in the midst of preaching is drawn or driven 



A WORD OF WITNESS. 317 

into closer contact with God, and comes to 
feel that his heart has never been fired with 
passion for souls or the flame of the Holy 
Ghost. He has a holy unrest until God 
touches him with the live coal from off the 
heavenly altar, and then he begins to burn 
as never before to reach with the gospel 
message those who are practically outside of 
the Church and its influences. 

But a second obstacle confronts him. He 
is a pastor of a church that has little or no 
evangelistic spirit. There may be wealth 
and numbers and outward prosperity, but 
there is also a worldly spirit and atmosphere. 
The Spirit of God is not present in power, 
and the people have not the mind to work 
in self-sacrificing ways. The pews are rented 
or sold to the highest bidder, and the poor 
do not feel at home or welcome. There is 
no systematic effort to get the outsiders who 
neglect all the means of grace to come and 
hear the gospel, and there is no systematic 
effort to carry the gospel to those who will 
not come to hear it. 



3l8 EVANGELISTIC WORK, 

Under circumstances like these, a pastor 
whose heart the Lord has touched and set 
aglow with desire to evangelize the heathen 
about him is in sore perplexity. He hesi- 
tates to sever the pastoral tie that he may go 
out and work for unsaved souls with unre- 
strained freedom ; he loves his people, and 
he feels that if they can be made to see 
the necessity and the opportunity for such 
aggressive work as he does, and to break 
away from a sluggish indolence and a fetter- 
ing conservatism, great results must follow. 
It may be that a few consecrated souls are 
prepared to move, but are opposed, or at 
least obstructed, by the apathy and inertia 
of the rest. 

To encourage and inspire a pastor who 
feels himself thus encumbered and embar- 
rassed in his work for souls, the author of 
these pages, at the suggestion of his brethren, 
adds to this book his own personal word of 
witness, — reluctantly, because it invades those 
secret experiences which belong ordinarily 
behind the veil ; and yet conscientiously, for 



A WORD OF WITNESS. 319 

he feels it a duty to give his testimony in a 
matter so weighty. 

In January, 1876, I was pastor of a large, 
wealthy church, preaching in a most elegant 
edifice, and surrounded with whatever could 
gratify a carnal ambition, love of ease, and 
lust of human applause. But God as with a 
lighted candle had been searching my heart, 
and shown me that idols were there, such as 
literary culture, intellectual accomplishment, 
oratorical power, and worldly honor; and a 
short time before. He had led me solemnly 
to renounce all these idols that I might be 
holier, more useful, and more blessed as a 
winner of souls. 

There was now in my heart no conscious 
idol, and for the first time there was a con- 
sciousness of close communion — almost con- 
tact — with God in prayer. With peculiar 
earnestness and importunity I was led to 
plead that in some way I might be enabled 
to reach the great host of unsaved souls out- 
side of the churches in the great city where 
I dwelt. At the same time there was a clear 



320 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

conviction that this prayer was of God and 
would be anszvered in a marked way that 
would show His hand. This persuasion was 
communicated to my wife alone, and we 
trustingly awaited the fulness of God's time 
for the blessing. 

On March 19, 1876, the Lord's Day, un- 
usual power was given me in preaching ; and 
the time seemed so near when God would 
reveal His hand and give new access to the 
non-church goers, that I felt pressed in spirit 
and yearned to give vent to my feelings. 
That very evening, after the service, I opened 
my heart to a beloved brother in the minis- 
try; and the next Friday evening, at the 
church prayer-meeting, I spoke plainly to 
my beloved people of our obvious lack of 
power to reach these neglecters of worship, 
and incidentally remarked that our superb 
church edifice perhaps repelled the poor, 
who felt themselves unwelcome. 

I had then been seven years serving that 
church as pastor; and that night the grow- 
ing sympathy between us seemed to melt 



A WORD OF WITNESS. 32 1 

or fuse our hearts into unity. It seemed 
natural to draw nearer to them ; and leaving 
the platform, I came and stood in the midst 
of them, and from the open Bible read the 
promises to praying souls, and especially 
to those who agree as touching what they 
ask. 

The Scripture testimony reached its climax 
in such a casting out of unbehef as fitted us 
to pray in faith. I knelt among them, as in 
a large family circle, and with strong crying 
and tears we together besought God to re- 
move even a mountain obstacle that might 
hmder us as a church from effectually reach- 
ing the unsaved. The Spirit of God, whose 
presence was so vivid as to be almost visible, 
interceded within us, with groanings which 
cannot be uttered, for a new Pentecost of 
power which would draw us toward the masses 
of the people and draw them to us. It was 
a whole people wrestling with God for a 
blessing. 

While we were praying, that building ivas 
b:tr}iing ! As the prayer closed, the smoke 



322 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

was already filling the room, but was attribu- 
ted to contrary winds driving it down the 
flues. In fact, the lath had caught from the 
smoke-pipe, and the fire was working its way 
behind the plaster and so escaped detec- 
tion. But early the next morning, Saturday, 
March 25, the flames burst forth and laid 
our beautiful house in ruins. This was a 
strange answer to our prayer; but it was 
the common conviction of devout disciples 
that the whole event had a Divine meaning, 
and that God had thus set before us an 
open door, great and efl'ectual, to the neg- 
lected and neglecting masses of our city 
population. 

We secured a large opera-house, and there 
the great central, vital truths of the gospel 
were preached simply and freely and extem- 
poraneously. A marked blessing was at once 
bestowed: more souls were hopefully con- 
verted in those sixteen months than during 
sixteen previous years of my ministry; and 
the cojtverts were almost exclusively from those 
outsiders hitherto unreached. Not only so, 



A WORD OF WITNESS. 323 

but from the day of that fire that church has 
been largely attended by the class of people 
toward whom our hearts had been so much 
drawn in prayer. The preaching of the 
gospel in simplicity and without price, in 
that place of amusement, somehow drew 
that church and the non-church goers to- 
gether, and the effect has been permanent. 
During the whole time of the rebuilding, 
polite ushers waited on all alike, and the 
poorest were made to feel that they were 
more than welcome. The relation of that 
church to the community is permanently 
changed. 

Upon no merely natural basis can these 
facts be explained. It might have been by 
a simple coincidence that the fire caught 
during the prayer; but for six months pre- 
vious God had, in answer to prayer, commu- 
nicated to the pastor the strong confidence 
that He would in some signal way give larger 
access to souls ; and, on the very Sabbath 
previous, that confidence had been commu- 
nicated to a brother minister, and on that 



324 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

very night to his own people, before the fire 
had been even suspected ! 

An assurance which proved so prophetic 
can be satisfactorily accounted for only on 
the ground that it was imparted by the Hearer 
of Prayer as a foretaste of the answer. But 
there were many other signal proofs that the 
Divine Presence was in that pillar of fire. One 
may be mentioned as an example. 

In the study, in the church tower, was a 
mass of manuscript matter containing valu- 
able results of Bible study, plans of sermons, 
etc. The desk which held it was so burned 
that only the iron lock was ever found ; all 
the books were consumed; but all that inan- 
tiscript, which could not be replaced, was 
found essentially unharmed, though bearing 
plain marks of its fiery ordeal. This again 
impressed every one as a token of the hand 
of God ; and my friend Mr. George Miiller 
urged me to embody these remarkable facts 
in a printed narrative, as a new proof of the 
power of prayer. 

That church, by a nearly unanimous vote, 



A WORD OF WITNESS. 325 

has made all pews in the reconstructed edi- 
fice free at the evening service. Young men 
have gone forth with printed cards of invi- 
tation, distributing them in hotels, saloons, 
and on street-corners previous to the hours 
of worship. But best of all, there is a new 
atmosphere prevailing ; the attitude toward 
the poor and outcast is no longer one of 
apparent coldness and indifference, but of 
warm welcome. 

The fact is, that whole church became 
evangelistic. The preaching was followed 
by familiar after-meetings, and missionary 
operations were carried on in destitute dis- 
tricts ; and so that fire which drove a house- 
less congregation into an opera-house for 
over a year, and led to the preaching of a 
simple and free gospel to rich and poor 
alike, begat a close contact with the mul- 
titudes that do not go to church, and has 
proved a lasting blessing not only to that 
congregation, but to the entire city. 

This plain narrative of facts is written with 
a definite purpose. It is such a history as 



326 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

cannot be private property ; it belongs to the 
ivhole Church, as a proof and an illustration 
that to a praying, believing people all things 
are possible. Here was a rich, cultured con- 
gregation, largely leavened with worldliness, 
composed almost exclusively of the edu- 
cated and elevated class, that for some rea- 
son are seldom drawn into evangelistic effort. 
It was a large church with very few of the 
poor in it, and with no practical contact 
with the great body of those who attend no 
place of worship. For more than a quarter 
of a century it had been somewhat unjustly 
deemed an exclusive church, as though meant 
for a select, elect few. It was not an aggres- 
sive force in that community. 

But the pastor and the more prayerful 
of the people felt moved to desire greatly 
increased service to souls, and to see the 
church holding a different relation to the 
community, — going out after the neglected, 
and compelling them to come in. And they 
prayed for power from above. Their faith 
was as a grain of mustard-seed, but it had 



A WORD OF WITNESS. 327 

in it the life principle of God and it removed 
all obstacles. In a sudden and strange way- 
God threw that church into close contact 
with the churchless masses. The gospel was 
preached in its purity and simplicity; the 
people were drawn to hear it, and found a 
warm w^elcome ; nay, they were sought after 
and invited to come. It was seen that there 
was power in a free gospel, and so all rights 
of pewholders were cheerfully surrendered 
for the second service ; plain congregational 
singing and after-meetings deepened and 
fastened the impression of the gospel ; ear- 
nest men and women w^ent out into the midst 
of the unsaved, and held prayer-meetings, 
Sunday-schools, and preaching services, of 
which more than one new church is now 
the result, with many other fruits which only 
eternity can unveil or reveal. 

To every fellow-pastor, and to every church, 
in the name of our common Master, we ad- 
dress these last words of affectionate appeal. 
Let us solemnly consecrate ourselves to the 
work of soul-winning. Let us have a pure 



328 EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

gospel preached, unmixed with sensational 
oddities and eccentricities, human philoso- 
phy and wisdom of words; let us warmly 
welcome the poor, the stranger, and even the 
outcast, and go after those that will not come 
to us ; let us have churches free, at least at 
the second service ; let us have singing that 
has the savor of worship, the flavor of the 
gospel, and helps to save souls; let us 
make the church the home of the people, 
associated with every rational pleasure and 
source of profit ; let us use all proper means 
whereby the most indifferent outsiders may 
be made to feel that we who love Christ are 
alive, awake, and after soids ; let us pray for, 
and until we get, that baptism of power which 
endues us with passion for souls and a holy 
zeal for the kingdom of God. And so our 
BetJiavens — houses of vanity — shall be 
transformed into Bethesdas, — houses of heal- 
ing ; God's angel will stir the stagnant waters, 
the multitudes will be drawn to the churches 
as fountains of salvation, and many a helpless 
cripple shall learn to walk in newness of life. 



A WORD OF WITNESS. 329 

With these words we close this volume, in 
which are embodied the deepest convictions 
which have been reached or wrought by a 
quarter of a century of study of this great 
theme. The great problem lies before the 
Church, and the Scriptures furnish its only 
practical, possible solution. The whole 
Church must accept the duty of telling the 
old, old story. Each one of us is his 
brother's keeper. To have heard the mes- 
sage is sufficient qualification and authority 
for sounding it in the ears of every unsaved 
soul. Let every hearer become a herald. 
This is the theory of evangelism, in a nut- 
shell; and we have only to put this theory 
into practice, to bring the gospel into contact 
with every living soul before the Bells of 
God's Clock of the Ages shall ring in the 
natal hour of a New Century ! 

"GO THOU, AND PREACH THE KINGDOM OF 
GOD." 



APPENDIX. 



APPENDIX. 



A. 

TO GUIDE INQUIRERS. 

1. You should firmly believe that Jesus can and 
WILL save NOW, and has saved you. 

2. Be ready to tell how you came to Him. 

3. Find the central difficulty which hinders 
the seeker. 

4. Shun controversy ; but meet all honest doubts 
and objections. 

5. Learn how to use your Bible, pointing to 
the very texts which show the way to salvation and 
what conversion is. — Acts viii., ix., and x. 

6. Cultivate a prayerfial, humble dependence on 
the Holy Spirit. 

7. Press every seeker kindly to a decision now. 

8. Fix in mind that salvation hangs not on feel- 
ing, but on choice. 



334 APPENDIX. 

9. Urge BELIEVERS to become confessors. — 
Rom. X. 10. 

10. Be able to put your finger on the follow- 
ing HELPFUL PASSAGES FOR DIFFERENT CLASSES OF 
SEEKERS : — 

(i) Backsliders. — Jer. ii. 19 ; iii. 13, 14. Hosea 
xiv. 4. Isa. i. 16-18. 

(2) Half-Convicted. — Rom. iii. 10-23 5 vii. 
24; I John i. 8-10. Eccl. vii. 20. Isa. liii. 6. 
Psa. cxliii. 2. Acts xiii. 39. Gal. ii. 16. Eph. ii. 
8, 9. Jer. iii. 5. 

(3) Despairing. — Isa. i. 18; xliii. 25 ; xliv. 22. 
Micah vii. 18, 19. Rom. v. d-Z. i Pet. ii. 24. 
Rev. xxii. 17. John iii. 16. 

(4) Fearful they will not Hold Out. — i Pet. iv. 
19. Psa. cxxi. I. Isa. xliii. 2. i Cor. x. 13. 2 Cor. 
xii. 9. Rom. viii. 38, 39. Jude 20-25. 

(5) Stumbling over Inconsistent Church-mem- 
bers. — Rom. ii. I J xiv. 3, 4, 12. John xxi. 21, 22. 
Matt. vii. 1-5. Hosea iv. 8. 

(6) Discouraged by Previous Efforts. — Jer. 
xxix. 13 ; 1. 4, 5. Deut. iv. 29. Rom. iv. 5. 

(7) Putting Off. — Prov. xxvii. i. James iv. 
13-17. 2 Cor. vi. 2. Heb. iii. 13. Luke xii. 20. 



APPENDIX. 335 

(8) Not ready to give up All for Christ. — Mark 
viii- 35-37; X. 29, 30. Phil. iii. 7-9. 

(9) Sceptical. — John vi. 40; vii. 17. Psa. xxv. 
14. 2 Thu. ii. 13. Luke xvi. 31. 

(10) How to Believe. — John v. 24. Look, Isa. 
xlv. 22. Take, Rev. xxii. 17. Receive, John i. 11, 
12. Trust, Isa. xxvi. 3, 4. Results: Joy — John 
XV. II. Peace with God — Rom. v. i. Peace oj 
God — Phil. iv. 6, 7. Rest — Matt. xi. 28-30. 



B. 



We append the simple Constitution of the 
EvangeHst Band, of Bethany Church: — 

OBJECT. 

Its object shall be to train young men for all 
forms of Christian work, and to engage them in 
active service for souls. 

DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES. 

We do solemnly affirm our conviction that the 
testimony of a disciple of Christ is largely hindered, 
if not destroyed, by conformity to the world in his 
own life and amusements, and we hold that those 
who join thfs band should do so with the design 
and purpose of living a life separated unto God. 

AGREEMENT. 

In joining the Evangelist Band, I purpose, with 
God's help, to maintain and live, not only strictly 



APPENDIX. 337 

moral and temperate, but to be an exam^Je to all 
believers in godliness and purity, and lo devote 
such portion of my time as may be consistent with 
other duties to the direct work of witnessing to 
Christ and of winning souls to Him. 



c. 



(form used by the author for invitation to public 

WORSHIP.) 

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APPENDIX. 339 

(reverse side.) 

I WAS GLAD WHEN THEY SAID UNTO ME, LET 
US GO INTO THE HOUSE OF THE LORD. 



Strangers Always Welcome! 

Sabbath-School and Bible Classes 

AT TEE CLOSE OF MORNING SERVICE. 

Interesting Devotional I Social Meetings 

Every TUESDAY and FRIDAY Evening. 

Union Bible Service on Uniform S. S. Lessons 

At Y. M. C. A. Hall on Saturday Evenings at 7:45. 
Conducted by the Pastok. 



fjnOD so loved the world that He gave his 
fji'ily begotten 

5^ ON, that whosoever believeth in Him might nc 
Jt^erish, but have 

Everlasting 
Life. 

^ome unto Me, and I will give you 

J|%est. Take my yoke upon you and learn 

\jf me : and ye 

^hall find rest unto your 

J^oulsl 



340 



APPENDIX. 



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